Columbia University Welcomes Ten Fellows from the Open Society Foundations

The OSF fellowship was designed to provide training in social work to implement reform, create policy,and foster the development of social work in participating countries. In their second year, Fellows will develop a project that they will implement upon return to their home country. They will also attend a professional immersion seminar in which they will translate social work knowledge and skills for use intheir own communities. Upon the conclusion of the fellowship, Fellows will return home to apply their new knowledge in practice as academically educated professional social workers.

While this is the first year that Jordan is part of the OSF program, OSF has supported specially selected MS students from Central Asia for a decade. Dean Jeanette Takamura has said, “The School is excited to be welcoming the tenth cohort of OSF fellows from Central Asia and the first four OSF Fellows from Jordan. We look forward with great anticipation to the Jordan Fellows acquiring an MS degree in two years and in then assuming leadership positions in their home country, just as has been the case with our OSF alumni who are doing important work throughout Central Asia. While the Jordanian Fellows are at the School, they will be very much engaged in the Jordan Social Work Education for Excellence Program, which has been working with leaders in their homeland to build the social work profession.”

The OSF Fellows who are beginning their studies at the Columbia University School of Social Work are, from  Jordan, Asma Abu-Dahab, Shadi Bushnaq, Samira Hajjar, Lina M. Hamdan, and Laila Abdul Majeed; from Tajikistan, Masrur Karimov and Fakhriniso Kurbonshoeva; from Kyrgyzstan, Sultan Mamytov; from Azerbaijan, Mehriban Nasibova; and from Georgia, Salome Vadachkoria.