International exchange program gives Houlton UM student ‘global’ perspective

For Casey Faulkingham of Houlton, it was a chance to live in a bustling European city and to work with children and refugee families from Afghanistan, Russia and Morocco. For Aiko Van Landeghem of Belgium, it was an opportunity to experience campus life and hometown culture in Maine and to understand the universal challenges of homeless teens.
    For both young women, the Global Work with Immigrant Kids (GWIK) exchange program, offered through the University of Maine School of Social Work with partner schools in North Carolina, Rhode Island, Spain, Denmark and Belgium, has opened the door to personal and academic growth, global travel, deeper commitment to social service, and a network of new friends.
The GWIK exchange aims to improve training and education for aspiring social workers in the European Union and the United States, according to Gail Werrbach, associate professor of social work and director of the UMaine School of Social Work.
“This program helps students develop understanding of global issues impacting social work, families and children,” Werrbach says. “The U.S. students learn about other ways to structure social, education and health programs. It really helps them think beyond our borders about ways that other countries try to solve social and health problems.”
In addition to broadening their academic and professional horizons, Werrbach says the GWIK program has allowed students from small-town Maine to travel far outside their home state and experience a semester of study abroad. And urban-dwelling students from Europe, who typically are more seasoned travelers, have had a chance to experience the slower-paced charms of rural life in northern Maine.
The Elegast Centers for Youth and Family provide a range of social services in the metropolitan area of Antwerp. For Faulkingham, the opportunity to work with this multifaceted organization was too good to pass up.
Any ambivalence she may have felt about leaving UMaine during her busy junior year, traveling alone in Europe or living in a foreign culture evaporated when she received word she had been accepted into the GWIK program.
“As soon as I got the e-mail, I knew I was going,” she says. She arrived in Antwerp in January of 2011, hosted by Van Landeghem’s school, the Plantijn Hogeschool.
Assigned to the Harmonie center in an immigrant neighborhood of Antwerp, Faulkingham, 22, worked in a residential setting for about a dozen youngsters between the ages of 6 and 18. Most of the youth have been removed from the care and custody of their parents due to abuse, neglect or other serious problems. Some have been involved with illicit drugs. Most have deep-seated mental health problems.
“This is court-ordered protection for the kids while the families figure things out,” she says. But few of the children return to their parents immediately, she adds — most move on to different residential settings more suited to their needs. Some are placed in the care of family members but maintain contact with referral agencies and services.
While some of the families whose children are at the Elegast de Harmonie are Belgian, many come from other countries, including Afghanistan, Russia and Morocco. Some have been traumatized by war, revolution and political repression in their home countries and have come to Antwerp for asylum. They seek economic opportunity — or at least survival — but typically find themselves relegated to low-pay, low-status jobs in an intolerant foreign culture. Many speak neither English, French nor Dutch and struggle with a significant language barrier.
The children at the Harmonie center have many reasons to be disenfranchised, Faulkingham says. The center staff works closely with them as they participate in support programs, on-site educational tutoring and recreational activities.
“We participate in their daily lives and try to earn their trust,” she says. “It is our job to gain their trust enough that they will open up to us about their lives.” That relationship forms the basis for ongoing referrals to long-term placement, mental health counseling and other support services for the children who pass through Elegast de Harmonie.
In her semester-long field placement through the Plantijn Hogeschool, Faulkingham learned a lot about the social underclass in Antwerp and about working with youngsters generally. The experience has cemented her commitment to social work as a career path.
“I am really good with people,” she says with confidence. “I need to be helping people directly. As long as I’m not behind a desk all day, I’ll be OK.”
Both Faulkingham and Van Landeghem reaped many benefits from their GWIK participation. In addition to their field placements, both were enrolled in undergraduate courses at their host schools. They participated in the cultural lives of their local communities and made friends with fellow students, staff and others. Both were glad to return to their homes, and both said they would repeat the internship experience given the opportunity.
Faulkingham was surprised to find that her new school in Antwerp offered little by way of social activities.
“There is no campus life there. You go there for school and school only,” she says. Faculty members were supportive and engaged in her placement, she adds, but she had to develop a degree of independence and self-sufficiency. She shared an apartment with another American intern and quickly learned her way around the city, taking advantage of cultural and social opportunities. But the urban lifestyle didn’t really suit her.
“I found out I was not a city person. I could live anywhere if it’s not in a city, “ she says. “I was really homesick. I was very ready to get back on campus [at UMaine]. I just really missed home, I missed my house and my friends. But I would go back to Antwerp in a heartbeat.”
Aiko Van Landeghem’s semester-long stay in Maine included a field placement at Shaw House in Bangor, which provides emergency shelter and other services for homeless adolescents and teens. While not the immigrant population typically studied by GWIK participants, the disenfranchised youngsters at Shaw House face many of the same challenges, she says.
“Being in the shelter has opened my eyes to the problems of homeless kids,” Van Landeghem said. “When I go back to Belgium, I want to work with this population.”
Having met Faulkingham briefly in Antwerp last spring, Van Landeghem was happy to reconnect with her American counterpart when she arrived in Orono last fall. She shared a big Thanksgiving holiday with Faulkingham’s family and friends in Houlton, and even got exposed to the ritual shopping experience of Black Friday at the local Walmart.
“It was crazy,” she said of the pre-Christmas consumer frenzy. “I have never seen anything like that. I loved it.”
Faulkingham expects to graduate next May and eventually go to graduate school. She plans to stay in Maine afterward, although her career plans are not yet firm.”I was dead set on working with kids,” she says, but having just completed a two-semester field placement with Spruce Run, a Bangor-based project for victims of domestic violence, she is rethinking her choices. “The elderly, people with mental illness, women, domestic violence victims… social work has a lot of opportunities to change and move around,” she says.
Meg Haskell is the University of Maine public relations specialist.