Social Work Spotlight - International Episode 15: Nayanathara (Sri Lanka)

Episode Date: March 14, 2026

In this episode I speak with Nayanathara, a social worker from Sri Lanka and the founder of The Island of Stories, a volunteer organisation that supports children and women in education, while also working as a lecturer in Youth Studies at the Open University of Sri Lanka.Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:Nayanathara’s NGO Island of Stories Instagram account - @islandstorieslkNayanathara’s Research Gate page - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/K-N-N-JayathilakaSocial Work Diaries on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@socialworkdiariesAssociation of Sri Lankan Social Workers - https://slapsw.lk/Community Solutions USA - https://community.solutions/United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) - https://www.unfpa.org/IREX - https://www.irex.org/Asia Safe Abortion Partnership - https://asap-asia.org/Asia-Pacfic Forum on Sustainable Development - https://www.unescap.org/events/apfsd13This episode's transcript can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LIjIeKdjUpzfeNB-2O_vT4O6_TAtGvrhJLM7Si0QaIs/edit?usp=sharing

Before beginning, I wish to acknowledge the traditional owners of the countries of guests featured in this podcast and acknowledge their continuing connection to land, waters and community. I pay my respects to the First Nations people, the cultures and the elders, past, present and emerging. Hi, and welcome to Social Work Spotlight, where I showcase different areas of the profession each episode, with a 12-month focus on social workers around the world as of August 2025. I'm your host, Yasmin Lupus, and today's guest is Nayanathara, a social worker from Sri Lanka and the founder of the Island of Stories, a volunteer organization that supports children and women in education, while also working as a lecturer in youth studies at the Open University of Sri Lanka. Thank you so much, Nayanathara, for meeting with me today, for coming on to the podcast and sharing a little bit about what it's like for you working as a social worker in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka. Thank you, Asmin, first of all, for inviting me to this podcast and giving me this opportunity, because social work in Sri Lanka is quite different when it compared to the Europe side and also the part of the world, also compared to other South Asian social work practices. And I'm actually very excited to talk about this because social work is an emerging profession in the country right now. Yeah. I work as a lecturer right now. I'm not practicing social work directly, but I'm also, you know, do things like case work, having cases, or sometimes I do group work activities with people, especially when a disaster situation happens, or, you know, if someone needs any help, because, you know, when I go to some communities and I engage with some

communities and they know that I'm a social worker and I can do some certain things. I can do some resource mobilization. I can be a facilitator sometime if they don't know anything that they can reach out to me and then get whatever they need. So with that, I help them people. So that's how things happen around me right now. But there are social workers in the country who work as full-time social workers but it's quite different compared to other social work practices we'll talk about in other questions yeah well maybe you can start by telling me when you first started in social work and what brought you to the profession yes well so I know many social workers out there in any part of the world they have you know like a special story that how they have become

social workers were inspired to them but for me honestly what I happened to me that was something that I didn't plan at all. Because I was major in mathematics back then in my secondary level education and then I finished my elevars and I selected to a university in the eastern part of the country. But I'm from the middle part of the country. And, you know, that age, we are very young, near and we dream big. So, and then I wanted to move to Capitia City to the Kalambu, Sri Lanka. And I was like searching for other option. And then, okay, I found out this degree of Bachelor of Social Work

at an institution called National Institute of Social Development. And back then that was the only institution in Sri Lanka, which was giving social work education to people. And then I just enrolled. And honestly, very honestly, I had no real idea what social work looked like and what the power of social work, what social workers can do, how, I mean, what kind of social changes they can make. And then eventually I started to learn,

and it was quite difficult for me, the academic theoretical part of social work, because it was not something, you know, like in South Asian context, even in Sri Lanka, people think about becoming doctors, engineers, teachers or businessmen, or different kind of profession. but I'm pretty sure you know and imagine to be a social worker because it's not that popular.

It's not that recognized. It's not in the bigger picture. You can't see it much. But somehow I ended up studying social work. And in second year and third year, we went to do this group work, community work practices. And that's the time everything changed for me. And I think social work literally helped me to understand people in a way. had never thought about before. You know, social workers, we use different theories such as I say,

like system theory. We try to understand how the all system work around people, not just individual behavior, but how those, you know, larger system around them affecting to them. So that came to my sense after studying like a lot of theories and after those of reading and working with people and meeting different agencies and then I realized there's something which we don't think much as people as human being and that what changed me to think that yes it's just not studying social work but I really want to be that change maker that person who can at least change someone else's life better so that's the point the exact point that's I wanted to be a social social worker, honestly. And I'm so glad and I'm so proud that I studied social work and I became a social worker. And that's defined today, who I am today, how people see me, how they think who is nine and therr and how they see me on social media. If I go somewhere, Sri Lanka is a smaller country and the communities where you live, everyone know each other most of the time. So they know who is this person and what they are doing.

So I think that's the point and these are the facts that I can tell you that this is where I stand right now as a social worker. Another thing, you know, like what interesting about social work in the country, so we are a majority of Buddhist country and then we have Muslims, Tamirs and Christians. And everyone does good work here. Everyone does charity and volunteer work. and they consider themselves as social workers. I'm not blaming to that fact. But that's okay, that's fine, that's really good because they do good work.

But then later on I understood, social work is not just doing charity. It's about rights. It's about dignity and it's more about the justice and it has that sustainable part. It took some time to understand me like what exactly social work look like because the influence I had from my religion and my culture

it was different compared to social work as a profession. Yeah, so that's how. And then over time also I understood that the social issues, they don't stand alone. It mix with different other kind of factors as well, let's say like psychological matters or maybe the poverty or the economic problems. or maybe the politics.

So then later on I started to study other things as well, like how governance looks like, how the human resource management support to social work practices, and then later on things like trauma-informed care, things like counselling. Because I wanted to be more equipped that I'm not missing any point when I'm going to work with a case or a group or with a community. And that's why you studied the diploma of counselling as well?

Yes, well, yes. Because I understood, like, there's a huge knowledge gap in Sri Lankan social work context because it's mixed with this social services and welfare and social. There are three categories in the country, like social services in the bottom and then welfare, social work. So it's a mixed up thing. Like we even can't play a social work in a situation. because people don't understand what is it.

So for that, I wanted to learn furthermore, like what are the other things we can include when we practice social work? Yeah. And it's interesting you talk about the difficulty with, I guess, the development of the social work in terms of academics in the country. I was speaking with another social worker in Nepal, and she was talking about how social work is still quite a young profession. And what it meant is that whenever she wanted to move forward in her training and her own understanding

of what she could be in the profession and what the profession could be on a national level and she was wanting to perhaps proceed to more training or more research. And what she was told basically by the university was, well, you should go do a PhD so that you can then be someone who knows a lot more about a particular area of social work and then you can teach it to others. So is that what you're finding in Sri Lanka if there's perhaps a big gap in knowledge because it is a newer profession being taught at university?

Is it something that there's just not enough information out there yet and people are having to build the knowledge as they go? Exactly. I mean, that's the reality here in Sri Lanka as well. So recently we had this 28 ECA-FASIFIC Regional Social Work Conference in Sri Lanka, And so social workers and association from, especially from Asia Pacific, including Australia and New Zealand, they came to Sri Lanka. And then we had this discussion where things like, you know, as an example, why we can't have a license and how, why this process is, you know, lagging every day. And even though we talk with the policymaking level people agencies, why still we can't reach out to this.

and things like why we can't develop code and conducts of social work, especially to the social work context in the country in Sri Lanka. And then we realize it's not just happening in Sri Lanka, but countries like Philippines, Vietnam and yes, Nepal, they're also facing the same issue. I think one reason for that is the knowledge gap. And then the other reason is how the culture and the religion work in these countries, because we do lots of charity work, we do lots of social services.

As an example, like let's say the flood is happening and you go and view rations and you call yourself a social worker. When we've been, we as who studied social work and when we go and tell those people that social work isn't something like that, it has another big part included that you need to to address, we are currently unable to, like, we find difficulties to address that two scenarios because of the knowledge gap, the limitation we are having. I had some situation when I do community practices and when I go and tell that I'm a social work, I studied social work, I know how to address this matter, how macro-micro-meso

system work and how that affect your own issue. And even the, you know, of a person, the individual case, that particular client also says sometimes, oh, I do social work. I go to the temple and in this special day I do lots of work and people consider me as a social worker in this community. So it's something about the way we think and attitude and how the religion and culture affect the way they think. So we are struggling with that time. And that's one reason why I am currently in academia, because I am seeing that knowledge gap that we are having the things we need to address. I remember once I was explaining to another academic person who even has no idea like what is social work look like. I said that imagine you are going to a homeless person and giving a meal or a fish and it just gave and you didn't come back.

And next day you are going and giving you. some equipment that he can catch a fish. And third day, you're going to that person and you teach that person how this thing work and it has a sustainable part. So I think we, in our context, we can't identify where we need to change some certain parts, how we practice, the way people think how they can react. So it's very complex, as I've seen. But we can do things, certain things to put everything into a roadmap and then we can go toward it. You've just reminded me. I was speaking with a social worker from Malaysia,

nor a few episodes ago. And she was telling me that in the Malay language, social worker translates to volunteer. So they're having very similar problems in terms of legitimizing, I guess, but also officializing the profession to a point where people understand this is actually a professional role. Yes, you can be a volunteer. here, but that's not, you're being paid to be a professional as a social worker.

So trying to distinguish between the two as being difficult for her. Yes. I'm curious to see what has led to this point in your career. So you finished university, you did your diploma. Maybe you can tell me what's led to this point in your career now. What were your experiences when you first left university? Right. So in this point in my career, I think this is of many layered experience coming together over time.

you know it was a single plan or a straight path i'm seeing you know the journey began with first from my academic and then community work and then i did lots of research and then currently engaging me lots of activism work and that's how so it's not like a straight single part that i want to be a case manager or a case work straightforward but since with the the current social work picture in the country. So I had to think like where I need to go and stand. So that's how I choose academia first. I thought like actually academia was one of my goals when I was in my second year. I started to read lots of books from countries like Australia, India, Canada and USA and how their social work look like. And then I realized we need to improve a lot. We need to improve our

syllabus a lot. There are so many knowledge gap that we need to address. So that's how I came to academia, but actually I'm currently specialised in youth studies, not social work again. That's a social problem, you know, like we're only limited social work academics in the country. Majority are people who studied sociology and things like anthropology, not even social work. I'm not sure how many PhD holders in social work, but very less like less than 10 in the country right now. They also went to outside of the country and then learned and they came back as the example you mentioned about Nepal. Like they asked them to go outside the country and learn a PhD and then come back and feel

the knowledge gap. I think the other academic in our country also doing the same. And actually that's what I'm planning too to go outside the country and then learn social work and then come back and feel the knowledge gap. I think that's the best we can do right now. And apart from that, additional to my academic career, I also have a non-profit organization in the western province of the country in a fishery community called Island of Stories. So talking about that initiative, when I wanted to do my community work practices, I was given six months and then I wanted to find a community and then I was like roaming here and they're in

the coastal area and I went to a place it says it was another small island located in a big lagoon and I was going to that particular small community and a kid came to me and asked that are you here to buy drugs and I got so shocked that kid was literally I would say like age could be like six to seven and later on I learned that kid was a drug dealer was using that kid to sell drug because police there were suspect kids selling drugs and I had kind of a Filipino look and then kids thought like I am a foreigner who's bombing here and there and then I decided I'm going to choose that community to do my community work practices and I ended up developing that small community work practices to do a kind of an volunteer initiative. So that's how I ended

up starting a volunteer non-profit organization. I mainly focus on naturally empowering children through education and also engaging them in different kind of development program, mainly using storytelling. I love storytelling. That's one of area which I am special. I am special. So this is where my career right now, like I'm engaging in academia full-time, as well as part-time, I'm managing my own organization and help individuals, communities, groups, youth, women, anyone I can support. And also because of studying social work, I think I achieve some other things as well. Like, you know, I went for different fellowships and conferences outside the country as an example.

this prestigious fellowship called Community Solution in the USA. And I got the opportunity to work at a theater where they work with social workers and community mobilizers to empower them using different theater activities, storytelling and different kind of performances. And honestly, that was the first time I learned that how social workers in those countries work. and how social work system, the support system work. As example, I was in Florida, in Gainesville in a very remote area, and I met one social work.

And she said, like, when I'm visiting certain houses, they are really afraid of me. And they think that I'm like a police officer to them. If something is wrong, that they're coming and visiting me. So that's how sometimes people feel like, because it has that power that I'm not telling like people are afraid of social work but they know that social workers can change some certain thing in positive way. So that's how I actually exposed to international social work practices and I learn a lot.

And then also I engage with some organization like UNFPA, IREX and Asia Safe Abortion Partnership and then APFSD and there are like lots of organizations. and that's how I learned like and one thing that shape my career and on the other hand they allowed me to see how you know local reality is connected to global system and how research advocacy community-based work and they can influence policy and social changes not just in my country but beyond as well yeah and I think yeah that's what I can tell about like where my career I now but being a lecturer right now we send a destination I would say I don't know in next two years where I'm going to be and what I'll be doing but I want to be full-time social work I want to engage

with communities people and I want to see there are issues through other system barriers and changes and try to see and understand how I can help them so that's what I really what. And so you're heading to Adelaide soon to do a bit more research and study. What is your focus going to be? Do you know yet? Or are you just hoping to take it all in and get some experience? I love to study more about decolonising social work practices because we practice lots of Western theories right now. The theories come from, example, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, or maybe UK countries and those all theories are westernized and but I feel sometimes whenever I want to apply some theory or to try to understand some issue through a theory and I can see some mismatches

it's because those theories not come from my context has come from different other contexts so but I'm really interested right now is learning how can I decolonize these theories into social work practices and on other hand Sri Lanka has lots of experiences of violence, conflicts, we had a 30 years of war and then another Easter Sunday attack. So I want to learn about how the impact of intergenerational trauma on us and how social workers can support to people to overcome that intergenerational trauma. Because I have seen how people are suffering from PTSD and different kind of, you know, ambiguous loss and so on. Yeah, that's amazing. And,

my limited understanding of Sri Lankan, I hope to learn a lot more about the country as I travel around it, but you had the civil war, which is the long war you were mentioning, and then you had a financial crisis after that. And so it's kind of been this one thing after the other where your country is reeling from that, trying to recover, hit with something else, and then there's all this political turmoil in the month's all that. So I'm guessing a lot of that is you can tell me if I'm wrong, but what I would imagine come out of a lot of that is socioeconomic problems, post-conflict trauma, as you were mentioning, social inequalities like gender and ethnicity and religion, all those sorts of things, ethical dilemmas, I don't know, there's so much that social

work could be impacting in those areas. And Australia has a lot of unfortunate social work history, but yeah, yeah, I think there's a lot to unpack and a lot you could take back to Sri Lanka and say, well, this is the knowledge that I've built and here's how we can apply it within the country. Yeah, I think on other hand, Sri Lankans are very resilient and they are very united. They help each other. So we have that aspect on one side

so that what social workers can be is like they can build that bridge where what they are missing. So that's what I'm seeing right now, especially with this cycle of situation. And apart from those studies, I would like to see, you know, what I can contribute to the academia again and more about research, because we don't have that much research studies based on social work as well right now. How long are you planning to be in Adelaide in South Australia?

Hopefully three years, like two years for the master's and another year maybe I want to work. I want to work with the Indigenous. communities. I have read about a lot. So I'd like to work with some kind of the Aboriginal communities maybe. And then I'll be back to the country, Sri Lanka. Amazing. That's a good chunk of time. What do you find challenging? What is the hardest part of social work for you, either as an academic or just as a social worker in general? First, I think one thing is that we don't have code of conducts and ethics to practice social work. So example, I remember like I never studied this during my university days that when

people from other countries do case conferences, like say case meeting, case work meetings. So they use this approach as things like when you go and meet the client, you ask them, is this okay, this space is okay, whether you need another person in this room. this object matters to you you know very simple things but I have never studied something like that when I studied case work or case management subject

in my university of course our syllabus and knowledge the materials are not that updated that could be one reason for that but if we have developed proper code and conducts and ethics and those principles properly

for Sri Lankan context I'm currently actually following a ASW cord and conducts because it's quite easy for me and it's related to Sri Lankan contacts as well in some cases. But if we have kind of a framework, a proper framework to practice social work, that would be really easy. That would be very beneficial for us. So that's one problem we are having. On other hand, the limited resources, of course, the knowledge and the materials and bureaucratic barriers, you already mentioned we have these political changes all the time.

And we had like different kind of governments and they are changing and they are corrupt and things like that. And slow institutional change, especially when it comes to education. And when people are really in need, their needs are very urgent, but we can't help them out because it's not structured. It doesn't have that, you know, the flow that we can adopt. this to that. So that's one challenge we are having. And of course we don't have a licensing system. Like in Sri Lanka, for lawyers they have license. For doctors, they have a license. But social work, there's no license. And I know you wouldn't believe that there's no job profession called social work. People advertise, okay, case worker, case manager, social worker. So you have that job titles.

But in Sri Lanka, there's no title like social worker, case manager. only few international organizations like Save the Children or like people who actually studied social work and have their own agency's organization they call job title called social work but apart from that hospitals they have psychiatric social workers but only very limited jobs I would say like if I say around for the whole country let's say like around 40 to 50 jobs name as social work other than that there's no social work jobs so that's one barrier we are having and that's one reason why actually i mean the academia as well so it's the professionalizing time matters a lot for us and in the licensing and one example i would say like during this cycle

on the post-disaster recovery period other social work students and people who studied social work and working in different fields, the parasocial workers, I would say. They were in the front line. They work as frontline workers. But the problem was that this work remains informal and lack of structures, training, and professional recognition. So if we have these facts, this solution with us, I think this could make it more effective and sustainable.

And other things like the things like mental health of social work, if I'm talking, so the emotional weight that they are carrying and they engage with trauma and things like gender-based violence, the generational trauma, the climate change problems. And this requires constant reflection, I think, and the resilience and strong professional boundaries and also ethical dilemmas are very common. So to balance that care, the autonomy, the confidentiality, to deal with those political realities, the cultural barriers, the religious influence.

So we need to have a proper structure of social work practices in the country. So we don't have that peer support, that social work, If social workers are having any issues, we have association, we have alumina bodies, but still social workers, they don't get that peer support to overcome their challenges. Only because this cyclone happened, our Sri Lankan association of social workers, they created a peer support group. I think that was a good progress, I would say. Other than that, that's one reason, that one challenge. We are having the self-care, the peer support that social workers need that is lacking. I think the top of that, the professionalizing social work profession, the top of all of that,

I am seeing. So if we can find a solution for that, I think it could not only strengthen the frontline responses, but it also bring broader benefits like including better recognition, structured training and more sustainable impact for the communities we work with. And it must be really disheartening for social workers who are graduating to know that their profession is not recognised as strongly or when they leave, they've just spent all this time studying and with a few exceptions, they're not going to end up with a job that gives them that title, that recognition, that pay scale probably isn't there either. So you're probably missing out on a huge.

chunk of people that could and should be studying social work but they're not going to because there are those barriers present. I'll say only a few students are studying social work, not a larger group of people studying social work. The one reason is that it's not a but when you passed out you can find jobs like project management, project assistant or sometime you'll be assigned to work with certain communities to mobilize resources. So jobs like that are there.

but not their title as social work or social work. Yeah. That's so sad, but I hope in future this will be better. The association together would do something for that future. Yeah. Hopefully. Do you know how your degrees in Australia will be recognised? Do you know how Sri Lanka will acknowledge that?

Is that something that you're just worrying about once you've got it? Actually, I have no idea about that. No. Okay. I mean, it's less important because you're already, I guess, able to work at a high level in academia and in social work. And it's ultimately just going to benefit you personally. But just be nice to know how that would affect your opportunities in Sri Lanka. But I guess you'll find that out.

Yeah. Hopefully, yes. Do you have an opportunity now? I know you do in the NGO, but in your academic work, do you get a chance to use any of that creative storytelling with your students? Yeah, yeah. I actually apply the techniques of storytelling when I teach with students. So I teach for a degree called Youth and Community Development. So that's the only youth studies degree in whole South Asia right now. I work at the Open University of Sri Lanka. So they are the only educational institution right now in the South Asia of this degree. It's affiliated with the Commonwealth. So yes, I applied, you know, basically. is my social work knowledge to teach students who studying youth work because it's very similar youth work and social work. I think youth work is a part of social work. That's how I'm saying. It has very good and very close similarities. Also, you know, when we have this staff development

programs, trainings, and so I conduct things related to a talk about how we can you start to overcome even our mental exhaustion when we in the academia, it's sometimes really tough. So because we work with paper students and we don't have time to think about what happened even around the world or in the country because we're packed with work. So I use storytelling, you know, as an empowerment to support them to release their stress. And not just in the academia, I work with other clubs like Rotorak, Interact, Leo and some other youth organizations.

Also, I teach whatever I can do support with my social work knowledge. Wow. You do so much. How do you fit all that in? How do you find balance? What support do you need to be able to sustain that? I practice self-care a lot because I don't know, from my childhood, I being a multitask person.

I love to do two, three different things at the same. same time. Maybe that's what satisfying me that like work and then you know see kind of impacts and how they can influence someone else in a better way. But on other hand like let's say like I go to the communities but going to communities and talking with that people and that helped me to you know to reduce my stress or whatever things I'm going through and I do lots of journaling and I listen to music, and I have, like, I'm not working to a time table, but I have certain, you know, time periods, lots that I allocate that for my own self-care, my mental health, to talk with people, to engage with my family members, to my partner,

and so that's how I manage my work. Right now, I believe, like, I'm very young, I'm 28. I have a very long way to go, and this is the, the time where I have that energy that I can work a lot. So I want to use that. So that's what I'm really absolutely. But it sounds like you know your limits. You know where your boundaries are and you're quite firm with that. Yes. I maintain that boundaries like personal boundaries as well as professional boundaries as well. Because in a society such as yours it must be difficult to people probably refer to you as sister or they want you to be as involved in their lives.

as you can be because it's a welcoming thing for them. They probably feel like you're helping them and therefore they want to return the favor or, yeah, I'm just thinking all of my clients that I've had from Bangladesh, from India, from similar countries, they've all felt as though it's not enough to receive support they need to give as well and you need to find a happy medium of, I understand that this relationship of trust and respect doesn't happen unless there's something from both sides but you obviously need to be really careful culturally and respectful of how you manage that. That's very true. Yeah and I had some cases back then during my university days that I handle and they're still talking with me and they are telling like, okay, I open a shop after,

I mean, I remember I was supporting a girl who was studying about fashion designing and very recently she opened her own shop in her village. And I finished my degree like two years ago, but still she's in touch with me. I mean, we don't talk constantly, but she recently told me that she just opened her shop. So things like that happen. I think it's because, as you mentioned, the trust we build within them and the follow-up work we do with them. But on other hand, it's also very difficult, it's overwhelming to maintain that kind of

relationship with our clients. but it's not like in Australia or New Zealand where social worker and a client relationship is very different when it compared to Sri Lankan social worker and their client. So that's why I would say it's different. I would say it's not so professional. Professionally in the sense like sometimes as you say like sometimes they consider me as a sister

or like a neighbor supporting them. Yeah, I think we can see a different but still it's helping each other and try to give them our best. Yeah. I saw somewhere that you've written about social work and climate change or eco-social work to some extent. What do you see as our professional, maybe responsibility or impact? How does social work and climate change come together? Well, I studied about green social work.

I remember it was very nice. and I tried to understand where we can support maybe policymakers or communities to overcome the impact of climate change. And then what I realized like, this is Sri Lanka has different kind of development projects in overpopulated area. And they try to relocate people from different place to another place, example. we, for the last few days, we had lots of landslides and people are still missing. We don't know where they are now. And so the government tries to build houses in some other places and relocate them. This is not like you're directly doing something for climate change, but this is one thing

you can do for impact of climate change or like post-disin-post-disaster recovery situation. I think it's altogether one aspect. of climate change, maybe. So one thing what I have seen in Sri Lanka, like when they do things like relocating people, this project, they don't address the livelihood, these people, like how they have been, what their jobs look like, what their neighborhood look like, how they were supporting each other as neighbors and how the system looked like. they just, okay, we build a house and then you just go and live there.

So that's what government does here. They don't care how their system look like, what was their livelihood look like. So I think what social workers, what Sri Lankan social workers, actually they are doing that, they are engaging with government and the policy makers who are building, developing those projects and they give inputs like, this is how this person's livelihood like, their fishery community. Their livelihood is fishing and they need to go to the sea and they have the way of their living.

So you need to incorporate that lifestyle into the project. And things like relocating people. And on other hand, the awareness work, lots of social workers now engage with, especially student social workers now engage in climate change initiatives in Sri Lanka. they do lots of awareness because they know the way to approach people. I think social work is something like it's an art of working with people. It's an art that I'm seeing because we just don't talk to people.

We first listen them. We practice active listening a lot when we work with people. We just don't go and talk and don't explain things we do. But before that we try to ask their opinions, ask what they are doing. So we have some certain practices. So what social workers right now, especially student social workers, what they do is that they be a part of that projects or whatever developing work, development work. They don't do like direct practices with communities affected climate change problems,

but they are being a part of it. So that's how I'm seeing even that's what I'm doing. Yeah. That makes so much sense. I didn't actually put that together. When I was in Indonesia recently, I mean, there are volcanoes all over the various islands, but there was one particular volcano that was in the same national park as I was visiting. So it's Mount Semaroo. And I think it's still erupting actively. But when I was there, there was a huge eruption. And people were unsure whether we were going to be able to stay. But eventually the draft, the force of the explosion

and the gases and everything that was being spit out were going in the opposite direction, so it was okay for us. I asked the tour guide, what happens to all these villages? If this thing is just erupting, it's great that they had enough warning that people could evacuate and no one was killed apart from, unfortunately, wildlife and that sort of thing. But what happens to these people? And they said, well, similar to what you're suggesting, the government will create housing or at least safe spaces for people to go to.

and they try to make that a permanent option for them because they know that these volcanoes are constantly erupting. But ultimately these families, these communities will return to the dangerous areas because it's not just a matter of having a roof over your head. It's, as you were saying, the familiarity of the area, the livelihood. They can't farm or fish or whatever they need to do in this new area that's been artificially set up for them.

So I didn't put two and two together, but it makes so much sense how that can be, absolutely a social work role and something that we can be really supportive with. Like Sri Lankan people, majority is there like they do farming. And if you place certain people who are doing farming in a place where they can't do farming, so what they can do, they move back to the original place. Even that's happening with drug rehabilitation in this country, you catch the person who's addicted to drug suddenly from a community

and then you put that person into probation or at your facility and you keep that person for like five, six months and then there really is the person to the same community. So there are lots of things that we need to address. Of course, our social workers are trying their level best to find solutions for those issues. Are there any other programs or projects that you have the opportunity to work on in the little bit of time you have left in Sri Lanka?

In FIsh, I'm thinking of any way I want to build a volunteer network to my own organization, if I will be not engaging with communities, but I don't need to keep going the works I've been doing. So one thing that I've been planning. And also next year, there will be a big conference coming on youth work in Sri Lanka. so I want to be a part of that and try to see where I can put social work in that conference and yeah I don't know what will come next but I'm a little bit interested in climate change mitigation

disaster mitigation right now maybe I'll be focused on maybe drafting a policy paper over research in future before coming to Australia I'm very excited about doing my master's very soon Yeah, for sure. What would you say you enjoy most about social work? I can think of so many things from what you've said, but what makes it worthwhile for you? I think it's seeing people and seeing that something, I'll say, like as an example, especially young people, they realize that their own ability to make choices and take control of their lives after we support them. And example,

like students gaining confidence, I would say, since I'm working in a university. And, you know, especially when I advocate on sexual reproductive health and rights, as well, it's a huge taboo in the country. Things like abortion care. It's illegal in Sri Lanka. But whenever someone reach out to me, I'm so happy to help them out, even though I'm illegal. But, you know, when women get proper accurate health information that help her make informed decision. So those things make me so rewarding, happy, satisfying. And this particular incident happened me. There before yesterday, a girl reached out me,

an undergraduate student from a state university, reach out me through my LinkedIn. And actually I missed that message, but she replied and she get back to me again yesterday. she said she started studying she she chose the social work course because she watched my video on one of my social work academic contents on my youtube channel i mean i used to create social work educational content because i was like i wanted to let the world not world maybe sri lankas that there's a profession exist in this country called social work then that's how this look like and then I was making lots of videos about my educational journey

and then my field practicum and whatever conferences I was going. So this girl, she has watched one video of mine and then she has enrolled to do social work. And it made me so happy and I was so emotional after seeing that message. I think that's what we really want. Maybe those impacts, whatever we want, to try to do maybe those may not bring you like big resource but they may see in very small but that's the worthwhile i think that's what we feel like we did something yeah if you can inspire

just one person yeah i think that's enough that's amazing are there any resources that you'd like me to pop in the show notes things about maybe even the partnership organizations that you work with your own initiative, your YouTube channel, the approaches that you use. Is there anything specific that you think people should go out and listen or view or read? Well, I'm quite active on social media. So I have a YouTube channel called Social Work Diaries, where I record some of my social work practicum experiences. And also I run an Instagram account for my volunteer organization called Islands of Stories. Also, I have done some research on impact of intergenerational trauma on youth in Sri Lanka and social work, climate change, women, gender, children,

and those are also available on my research gate and Google Scholar profiles. So those are some of the resources I can recommend from my side. Also, if you can check out the profiles of association of Sri Lankan social workers. You also can learn about social work practices in Sri Lanka as well. Yeah. That's great. Yeah, thank you. I'll find all of those links and I'll pop them in the show notes.

I can share those links with you maybe my email. That would be really helpful. I appreciate that. Before we finish up, is there anything else that you wished I'd asked or anything else you wanted to share about your experience and what you do? I would say you don't need to be. discourage, thinking that maybe your profession is not recognized, so people don't understand what you are doing.

That's totally fine. That's very pretty normal. It's happening everywhere in the world where you shouldn't stop whatever you are doing. Because one day you can see at least even a small impact and someone's life has changed in a better way. So what my message to social work students and social work graduates who freshly started their social work careers out there in the world, don't give up just do whatever the work you are doing right now because in future you're going to see lots of things, good things.

And whatever you're doing right now is enough. It's probably more than enough. Yeah. No, that's so important for people to hear. And I'm just so grateful that you could share all of that. experience and even we were saying earlier on that these issues don't stand alone. There's always something else behind them. You're looking at the systems and the factors that influence the situations people find themselves in. And there are so many deep-seated issues within the country,

social, political context that I can't begin to understand, but obviously you'd have a more intimate knowledge of and you can help to influence things. And you're trying to find some professional structure and recognition that needs development in the country, but you're really desiring to promote capacity and awareness within Sri Lanka, which I think is admirable. And you're teaching youth work from the social work lens. I think even though you're doing something slightly adjacent, you never really take your social work hat off. So there's always, I think youth studies students are probably quite privileged to have someone

with your knowledge and background helping them out. and you're still wanting to further your knowledge, you're still wanting to develop your own experience in a different country and further your training. And I think that's wonderful as well. And I hope if I come to Adelaide or if you come to Sydney, we can definitely catch up and it would be so lovely to just see what you've been up to and follow your journey.

I'm really looking forward to that. So when I've been Australia, I will definitely let you know. So this world is very small so we can find a small. moment or some space to meet. Absolutely. I'm looking forward to that. And again, thank you so much, Nayanathara, for taking the time.

It's been so good for myself to hear, and I'm sure other people will feel inspired and get to know a little bit more about the context that you're working in through your story. Thank you, Aswan. Thank you for this opportunity. Thanks for joining me this week. If you would like to continue this discussion

or ask anything of either myself or Nayanahara, please visit my anchor page at anchor.fm.fm slash social work spotlight. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Blue Sky, or you can email SW Spotlight Podcast at gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you. Next episode's guest is Lamia, a social work practitioner, researcher and social entrepreneur from Azerbaijan, with over a decade of experience in migration, social inclusion,

child welfare, and gender-based violence, having worked with international organizations, including the UN system, UNHCR, ICMPD, and the Council of Europe, and actively advocates for evidence-based, community-centered social services. I release a new episode every two weeks. Please subscribe to my podcast so you'll notify when this next episode is available. See you then.