30 years of UW-Eau Claire social work interns in South Africa

Very few internships, however, offer an immersive international experience that fulfills a full-time supervised internship required for certain majors.

For a remarkable 30 years now, social work students at UW-Eau Claire have had such an opportunity through a well-established internship program in South Africa. Since the program began in the 1990s, more than 100 Blugolds have completed what they call a transformative academic and life experience.

An ‘accidental’ program launch

For such a long-running and successful program, it’s surprising to hear the program’s founder say it was sort of an accidental start. Dr. Nicholas Smiar, professor emeritus of social work at UW-Eau Claire, did not set out to establish a student internship program when he began working in South Africa.

“Beginning in 1985, I worked with the National Association of Child Care Workers in South Africa, conducting workshops and training for child and youth care workers and social workers and serving as a consultant for the South African Department of Social Work. Except for the COVID pandemic, I’ve been back every year since,” Smiar says.

“Amid those years of work, the South Africa internship program began quite accidentally,” Smiar admits.

Social work students at UW-Eau Claire knew about Smiar’s work in South Africa, and he says one day a student asked if it was possible to do an internship with one of the many agencies he supported.

“I did not know the answer, but was delighted to learn that yes, if existing educational internship standards of supervision in a qualified agency with comparable experiences and a faculty liaison were met, it could be done.”

The past three decades of South Africa internships have seen only three faculty leads from UW-Eau Claire — Smiar; Dr. Jeff Wright, a former social work faculty member; and Jamie Tester Morfoot, current faculty lead and associate professor of social work.

Smiar established partnerships with a host of different agencies in South Africa, connections that provided not only internship sites, but several other high-impact opportunities for Blugold students.

“In addition to dozens of social work interns, we have had students participate in faculty-student research in South Africa and others who went on the international immersion to South Africa — all possible through Dr. Smiar’s connections. I can say with confidence that more than 100 UWEC students have been impacted by these partnerships,” Tester Morfoot says.

Impactful experiences shared by students and alumni faculty

“I heard about the internships in South Africa and knew I wanted to apply,” says 2025 graduate Alicia Long, a Milton native who returned in August from her internship half a world away.

“I had lived in Ecuador years ago, and living abroad once again while completing my internship was an incredible option. As we know, social work often requires the ability to understand and communicate across cultures, and what better way to improve those skills than to work with children across the globe?” she asks.

Alicia Long and fellow social work cohort member Sadie Long (no relation) were placed together as interns at the Durban Child and Youth Care Center, a residential care facility in Durban, South Africa. The center provides care for children who have been removed from their families due to various forms of abuse or neglect.

“It took some time for the children to feel comfortable around us, two new strangers in their home, so for a while we just observed and learned about the administration work of the agency,” Alicia says.

The children were all native Zulu speakers, and the youngest kids had not begun school where English is taught, so Alicia and Sadie said they first needed to gain trust from the older kids with whom they could communicate.

Sadie, a native of Farmington, Minnesota, says the experience was both challenging and immensely rewarding.

“We got to learn and work there, but we were also immersed in their culture and daily life,” Sadie says. “It’s such a privilege to become part of a community in that way, and something that I will think about for the rest of my life.”

Alicia and Sadie have both begun their first jobs since graduating, Alicia as a social worker in Denver, Colorado, working with refugee teens, and Sadie as a 911 dispatcher in Minnesota’s Ramsey County. Both say that the South Africa experiences are already informing their work with people from diverse cultures. This sentiment is shared by two social work faculty alumni who also completed their internship requirement in the South Africa program.

Rachel Kilde-Boudjema, associate lecturer of social work, completed a South African internship in the King Williamstown Child and Youth Care Center where many of the resident children were orphaned by the AIDS epidemic.

“I felt well prepared for the experience, despite the vast differences on many levels. UWEC is a program focused on a generalist social work practice, not aimed at any certain demographics,” Kilde-Boudjema says. “Our graduates have the tools to successfully practice any form of social work. Blugolds leave here well prepared to apply their understanding in any situation and to eagerly learn from new mentors in the workplace.”

Molly Bonlender, clinical assistant professor of social work, adds that “the systems approach” to UW-Eau Claire social work instruction was useful to her work with South African youth.

“I felt ready for the work, thanks to a program foundation of building rapport through communication, and an approach referred to as ‘the systems approach,’ meaning that we examine the systems at work in someone’s life and how those systems impact their struggles. Systems vary from place to place, but whether in the U.S. or South Africa, understanding those systems is essential to facilitating healing,” Bonlender says.

Kilde-Boudjema, a 2010 social work graduate, says that her work in substance-abuse counseling was well informed by a cultural norm she learned in her South Africa internship.

“There’s a concept in the Bantu culture called ubuntu, which is a strong belief in universal connections of humanity, an interdependence that ties the tribe or community together,” she explains.

“Americans have such reliance on the self in healing, and I learned to help (American) clients see the community as the real source of strength in recovery and trauma healing. It’s rewarding to see current student interns learning some of those same South African lessons.”

Celebrating decades of success

On Oct. 7, faculty, students and alumni of UW-Eau Claire’s social work program held a reception and program to recognize and honor 30 years of the South African internships. Smiar and colleagues, including an agency representative from South Africa, were present to salute the dedication to high-impact opportunities for Blugolds and decades of impact Smiar has had on the social work community in the country.

“For me, the most gratifying part of the entire experience happens when students tell me how their lives and social work skills were enriched by their work and their intercultural experiences in South Africa,” Smiar says.

Students interested in learning more about the summer South Africa internships should contact Jamie Tester Morfoot at testerja@uwec.edu.