Several years ago, a group of Somali-Canadian graduates of Carleton’s School of Social Work were talking about ways they could give back to their homeland.
A 20-year-old civil war continues to simmer in southern Somalia, but the northern region of Somaliland has been relatively peaceful over the last decade. However, many people in the north are still dealing with the lingering aftereffects of devastating civil upheaval.
The Carleton alumni hit on the idea of setting up a school of social work at the region’s new University of Hargeisa, founded in 2000. They approached Roy Hanes and Allan Moscovitch, social work professors at Carleton, for support.
They readily agreed to back the effort. “There’s a lot of work to be done to rebuild communities and there’s a lot of work to be done to rebuild individuals’ lives,” Moscovitch points out.
He emphasizes that the alumni, not Carleton, are driving the grassroots project. “They’re in an excellent position to bridge between the two cultures,” points out Moscovitch, who has worked
on various projects with the city’s Somali community since the early 1990s.
Last fall, Carleton signed an agreement to cooperate with the University of Hargeisa. Dr. Hussein A. Bulhan, the Somaliland university’s president, attended the signing ceremony.
Ottawa’s Somali community has raised $5,000 for the effort and has set up a committee with representatives from the community, Carleton and Human Concern, a Canadian non-governmental organization that specializes in development in Muslim countries.
Moscovitch has worked with the alumni and the University of Hargeisa to draft a curriculum for the proposed school. The next steps will be to continue to fundraise and, ideally, to send a group of alumni to Hargeisa to help hone the draft curriculum with faculty there.