Participation in Botswana: A Case Study of Botswana National Association of Social Workers (BoNASW)

Abstract

Professional participation in Botswana has been lagging behind since the conception of the social workers association in the past 20 years. Participation in the professional body of social workers have been has a headache for the leaders of the national association. The numbers of social workers attending social work events such as the social workers day, leadership forum and the annual general meetings have been going down over the past 10 years since the official launching of the national association. This unfortunately is not only peculiar to social work, but it seems it worse among social workers. This has left those who are in leadership of the profession with many questions. The most important Questions that have been asked have been; what’s wrong with the social work profession where the participation in the professional bodies has been below par? Is it the problem of social workers only in Botswana or there is apathy all over? This paper has combined the shared information, experience from the author as the president of the association for 6 years, being the advisor for 4 year and now just an ordinary member but holds a position of International Federation of Social workers Human Rights commissioner in Africa. The paper also tries to look at the literature on participation in general.