Project goals

The project "Localisation of Social Work in the Arab Countries" (LOSWAC) aims to research the potentials and challenges of localisation in the Arab countries, as well as to establish a scientific network and platform for the regarding discourse.

In order to establish adequate responses in this regard, the following four main goals have been defined:

1. Strengthening localisation of social work theories and methods in the Arab context
2. Increasing research capacities and activities of social work in Arab countries
3. Promoting young social work academics of the Arab region in acquiring research skills
4. Fostering social work related academic exchange within the Arab region and with Europe
   

The project tackles these goals by the following measures:

• The PhD research cluster "Localisation of Social Work in Arab Countries" was initiated. Each of the participating universities receives funding for one research associate. The research associates collaborate on the subject during the whole project period. For this, they each travel to Jordan and Lebanon once a year (mobility). Each research associate is supervised by a professor from the respective university. Additionally, there has been an initial one-month stay in Germany in July 2019, accompanied by the professors for one week, in order to get to know each other, receive scientific research training and to structure the working plan.
• Three related conferences were organised, as per below:
  
  • Germany 2019: "Localisation of Social Work in Arab Countries: Foundations"
  • Jordan 2019: "Localisation of Social Work in Arab Countries: Demands and Approaches"
  • Lebanon 2020: "Localisation of Social Work in Arab Countries: Results"
For each conference, additional speakers were invited from the German GJU Network and from other Arab countries (Egypt, Algeria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia); this broadens the perspective, disseminates the findings, and provides further chances for spreading the network

• In order to create a theoretical basis and to enable others to comprehend the practical input from the LOSWAC team, the team established scientific papers and reflection papers in relation to their goals:
  • Localisation of social work in arab countries
  • Scintific orientation in the social work education
  • Requirements for successfull project management
• Student exchange scholarships are coordinated and financially supported by the project. They will provide opportunities to several students from the participating universities to study in Germany at THWS for one semester.
• Thesis mobility scholarships will support individual student mobilities for one month in order to help students to integrate the perspective of either the German or the Arab situation in their master’s theses.
• To foster the research capacities of social work in Arab countries, a curricula analysis will be established, in order to detect similarities and differences between the programmes existing in Libanon and Jordan. With this, focus points of the social work education will become visible which can then be strengthened.