130 Social Workers Across Borders

Professor Johnston Hong-Chung WONG is a welcome return guest. He co-founded —Social Workers Across Borders in 2005 and talks of social work in mainland China and Hong Kong.  Since then, this ,mainly voluntary, charity, has responded to tsunamis, earthquakes and other natural disasters showing that social work skills are tranferrable into the front line and can help in the immediate aftermath of tragedy. It also demonstrated that they can operate in a humanitarian, neutral way. They can work alongside organisations such as International Red Cross, coordinating services and supporting the most vulnerable. The normalisation of communities after traumatic upheaval with professional assessment of need, crises intervention and the directing of resources to facilitate treatment. Ukraine does need enormous support immediately and, eventually, in reconscruction. We talk of this. Social Workers Without Borders is a post-disaster humanitarian care organization, currently working in Greater China, especially the Mainland, and is committed to providing spiritual reconstruction and development of social work projects for post-disaster residents. Regardless of politics, race, religion or nationality, we are mainly professional social workers, uphold the belief that love knows no borders, provide professional voluntary services, and provide emotional and mental health to the vulnerable. Johnston Wong, Professor in Social Work and Social Administration, started his career as a youth worker in Hong Kong. His early academic interests focused on youth and family work, branching out to psychological stress, unemployment and industrial social work.  In Hong Kong he participated in various district and central government committees related to youth policies, education, social care and hospital governance. Since 2005 he was involved in many post disasters social work interventions and become the non-executive director of the Social Workers Across Borders. www.swab.org.hk   In 2006 he joined UIC as a Faculty member and helped to design the Service Learning Scheme and Emotional Intelligence Programs as parts of Whole Person Education. Later he was appointed as the Chief of Student Affairs. He taught many courses like Social Work and Chinese Laws, Disaster and Emergency Management, Healthcare Social Work, Social Group Work and Crisis Interventions.