International Social Work Day 2025 March 25, 2025
"Social justice is not an abstract principle — it is something you hold, distribute, and fight for. On March 25th, our students lived it."
Every year, the world pauses to recognize the quiet, relentless work of social workers — those who sit with grief, advocate inside broken systems, and believe that every person deserves dignity. This year, ECUSTA Higher Learning Institute's Department of Social Work did not just observe International Social Work Day. They stepped into it.
| 34Students | 7Staff Members | 1999SGDA Founded | 7Graduating Cohorts |
The Organization
A Women-Led Force for Change
Save Generation Development Association is not a large institution. It is something more durable — a women-led, grassroots NGO founded by Mrs. Bekelech Demessie Rorissa in 1999, built on the conviction that marginalized communities deserve more than charity. They deserve power.
SGDA works with women, girls, youth, orphans, and people living with HIV/AIDS. It runs vocational training, health support, educational programs, and economic empowerment initiatives — the full arc of what it means to invest in a human life, not just a symptom.
The Director General opened the visit with a frank, personal address. She spoke about the founder's empathy, her capacity to see the whole person — social, emotional, economic, physical — and build programs that respond to all of it. This was not a lecture. It was testimony.
The Visit
Theory Walked Out of the Classroom
After the Director's address, SGDA's social workers took the floor. They shared case studies — real interventions, real families, real outcomes — and talked about the unglamorous texture of the work: listening carefully, advocating persistently, and knowing when a system needs to change, not just a person.
The students then got their hands involved. Sanitary materials and stationery supplies, collected in advance, were handed over to SGDA's beneficiaries. It was a small donation in material terms. In symbolic terms, it was the students choosing to show up with something.
A tour of the SGDA offices followed — the organizational charts, the program structures, the documentation of lives touched. Students saw what it actually takes to run a social service organization at scale, and the humility that kind of work demands.
Core Values Encountered
What the Day Taught
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Empathy in Practice
Not a feeling, but a discipline — understanding clients' needs deeply enough to act on them without projecting. |
Social Justice as Work
Ensuring equal access to rights and opportunities is a daily practice, not a background value. |
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The Holistic Approach
Addressing the full person — social, economic, physical, emotional — rather than a single presenting problem. |
Partnership & Collaboration
SGDA's reach grows through alliances with health, education, and government — no organization succeeds alone. |
About ECUSTA-HLI
Fourteen Years of Social Work Education
ECUSTA Higher Learning Institute has been running its Bachelor of Social Work program since 2011, following a careful needs assessment of Ethiopia's social service landscape. Seven graduating cohorts later, alumni are embedded in NGOs, government institutions, and graduate programs at Addis Ababa University and abroad.
Community service has always been part of the curriculum — not as a checkbox, but as formation. Students have worked with Tesfa Addis Parents Childhood Cancer Organization, Ethiopian Red Cross, Merry Joy Ethiopia, Kidane Mihret Children's Home, and Adis Hiwot Rehabilitation Center, providing counseling, therapy, blood donations, food, and educational support.
The SGDA visit continues that tradition — and raises the bar for what it means to learn by doing.
"By witnessing the work of SGDA, students were able to deepen their understanding of social work and its practical applications — and were inspired to continue with a renewed sense of purpose."