Community Social Labs and Social Work: Bridging Gaps Between Universities and Communities to Solve Social Problems (Routledge Advances in Social Work)

This book introduces an innovative, experiential and participatory approach to social work education and community transformation.Community Social Labs (CSL) is systematically presented as both an epistemological framework and methodology for co-creating locally grounded solutions to problems that confront communities in the global south.With a focus on empirical experiences from Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania, this volume challenges readers to recognize communities as co-creators and owners of knowledge, whilst appreciating the role of universities as useful catalysts for societal change.As pedagogy, CSLs offer experiential and context-responsive learning, and they aim to democratize the curriculum to embed local knowledges.Stories directly from the field are used to demonstrate this, narrated first hand by students who participated in this innovative methodology.Thus, this collection offers a balanced and objective assessment of the potential of the approach, and the challenges that co