End of Year Messsage from ASWDNet

Dear ASWDNet Members,

As the year ends, I would want to thank you all for being part of the ASWDNet in some of the following ways:

You could be one of over 56 000 people who visited one of the 220 pages on our main website, www.africasociawork.net to view, download or share the resources that we have aggregated since 2019, including 100 theories from Africa and 346 dictionary entries.
You could be one of 405 people who registered for ASWDNet events in 2023.
You could be one of 270 who attended ASWDNet events this year.
You could be one of 60 people who got certificates this year.
You could be one of 52 people who works in one of our 11 committees and groups.
You could be one of 42 reviewers for our journals.
You could be one of the 140 subscribers of our website.
You could be one of the 1200 subscribers of Owia the Bulletin who received 36 issues that we published this year.
You could be one of the 114 registered members of the ASWDNet.
You could be a contributor to one of the 72 journal articles we accepted for publication or published this year. These include 6 issues for AJSW, 4 for JDA and 2 for SINCCD.
You could be one of the people who posted 30 comments on the website.
You could be one of 21 people who presented, lectured or blogged this year.
You could have read one of our 40 blog posts published this year, or all 85 posts published to date.

So many things happened this year:

Rebranded name and logo to represent development more in our work.
We initiated expanded awards.
Our newsletter became Owia Bulletin and now has an ISSN number.
Working with ASSWA, we inaugurated Wazee Day.
We did the largest survey on Ubuntu.
We inaugurated the Students Conference.
Created new websites for African Journal of Social Work, Journal of Development Administration and Journal of Social Issues in NCDs and Disability.
The prestigious Africa Journal of Social Work increased its rankings, moving from 1 star to 2 stars in the renowned African Journals Online rankings and Q2 from Q3 in Scopus. This achievement comes from persistently publishing decolonised knowledge, supported by decolonising authors, editors and reviewers.

What is coming in 2024?

The Journal of Ubuntu. Journal advisors and editors are being invited, use this link to apply.
New books – our work in 2024 will focus on publishing and promoting books relevant to Africa social work and development work.
Accelerated publications on Ubuntu.
Mfundo, our training portal will be launched.
More mentoring opportunities.
maJina (a project to aggregate a directory of African names of people with descriptions and pronunciations) - be the first to contribute by visiting maJina page. It only takes about a minute to add a name. A blog post about why this is important will be posted later.

The challenges ahead?

Human resources to keep all this work going.
Keeping activities and resources more relevant to maintain engagement of everyone involved.
Evaluating the impact of our work – are colonial textbooks being removed from libraries and syllabi? Is social work and development work teaching, practice and research becoming more focused on solving Africa’s problems? Is Africa’s knowledge influencing the world? Are African ethics being revalued or we are still looking at Bisterk principles of casework and the US code of ethics of frameworks for our ethics?

We are available to respond to emails except between 30 December 2023 and 2 January 2024.

I want to end by wishing you, your families and communities a successful and happy 2024.

Rugare

Convenor

ASWDNet