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Indigenous Strengths in Filipino Social Work

This document discusses the importance of incorporating indigenous Filipino strengths perspectives into social work practice and education in the Philippines. It notes that while Filipino people have demonstrated resilience through years of colonization, strengths perspectives were not emphasized until recently through western literature. The paper aims to rediscover strengths concepts from indigenous Filipino culture to make social work more culturally sensitive. It highlights the concept of "bayanihan," which represents the strength of community cooperation and support. Social workers are challenged to uncover indigenous strengths-based frameworks and incorporate them authentically into both practice and teaching.

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Williane Peñanueva
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1K views1 page

Indigenous Strengths in Filipino Social Work

This document discusses the importance of incorporating indigenous Filipino strengths perspectives into social work practice and education in the Philippines. It notes that while Filipino people have demonstrated resilience through years of colonization, strengths perspectives were not emphasized until recently through western literature. The paper aims to rediscover strengths concepts from indigenous Filipino culture to make social work more culturally sensitive. It highlights the concept of "bayanihan," which represents the strength of community cooperation and support. Social workers are challenged to uncover indigenous strengths-based frameworks and incorporate them authentically into both practice and teaching.

Uploaded by

Williane Peñanueva
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

BAYANIHAN: THE INDIGENOUS FILIPINO STRENGTHS PERSPECTIVE

BY: YOLANDA EALDAMA

Social work as a profession in the Philippines emerged during the colonial era, as such it was
heavily influenced by deficit and vulnerability perspectives. The early social work professionals who were
educated in the United States became the first social work educators and relied on western perspectives.
Social workers were saddled with rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts right after World War 2, that
they glossed over the need to rediscover indigenous concepts and perspectives for the indigenization of
the social work profession. Although the Filipino people have exhibited strengths through the years of
colonization and disasters, it is only recently that strengths perspective entered the Philippine social work
parlance via western reference books. This paper is an attempt to rediscover strengths perspective in the
indigenous Filipino culture and use this towards a more culturally sensitive social work practice.

Years of colonization have alienated the Filipino people (as people of the Philippines prefer to be
called) from their indigenous roots (Jocano, 1977). Filipino people who have been living in more than
seven thousand (7,000) islands have been strengthened by the need to survive in the midst of precarious
situations. The four hundred (400) years of subjugation by the Spaniards, generally fifty years (50) by the
Americans and four (4) years by the Japanese have made the Filipino people resilient. The strength of
indigenous people however, have been taken for granted by social scientist and human service
practitioners in this case the social workers.

Although the social work profession in the Phillipines emerged during the period of colonization
and was founded on western ideology with ideological underpinnings (Yu, 2007), through the years,
several social workers have sought relevance and struggled to make social work a catalyst for social
change. Going beyond the western preoccupation with pathologies and deficits these social workers live
with the masses, learned from them as they educated them of their fundamental human rights and tapped
indigeneous strengths based concepts to mobilize people for action.

Since social work as a profession took off in the west, social work education tends to overlook the
use of indigeneous concepts in imparting knowledge to students. Through constructive social work, social
work will be able to uncover and rediscover indigenous strengths based concepts and framework which
will make social work practice relevant and culture sensitive. The challenge for social work is not just to
translate western concepts to local words but to consciously revisit and rediscover indigenous strengths
based consepts and incorporate these in education and practice. Veneracion (2003, p. 423) posits that
“social work has been part of the Filipino culture even before the term social work was introduced to the
Filipinos. Social work was, then, in the form of acts of helping people outside of one’s own immediate
family, and this has always been part of the egalitarian barangay structure.”

Strengths based indigenous concepts are not only found in the Philippines. The different
languages in different parts of Asia are replace with strengths based concepts like resiliency. Resiliency is
katangiang bumangon in Filipino, hoi-book-eui-Gil in Korean, gaya lenting, gaya kenyal, gaya pegas,
gaya kegembiraan in Indonesian, daya tahan in Malay, Kha nang phuc hoi in Viatnamese, etc. (How to
say org). Social workers from Asia are challenged to revisit their respective cultural concepts and
languages and use these in their social work practice and education.

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