The only one thing I have always wanted to do with my life is to help underprivileged people. I am interesting in doing so because I believe this is the only essential difference I can make in the lives of people and to me it is the most important aspect of a successful career to me than any other. Before describing my personal mission, I would first like to describe myself. I am a mother of four children, a wife and a trusted teacher of young children. For the future, I see myself mindful, empathetic, caring, sympathetic and compassionate. The best description for me comes from Dalai Lama’s quote of ‘it is not enough to be compassionate. You have to act’. In respect to this quote, I practiced as a teacher to young children and I am have confidence that I will carry on with the same determination as I pursue my social work career.
My mission is to create a growing movement of leaders in organizations who will work together to ensure that children brought up in poverty acquire the best education. With this mission statement, I can say that my first priority in this life is my children. It is from treating my own children right that I can be able to make children of other people a priority as well. At personal level, my goals are to keep my children safe, support them and act as an encouragement to them as they keep growing into mature, trustworthy and mindful individuals in the society. At a personal level, I would like to support, grow and encourage my children to the extent that they have only positive impacts to all matters of life. My eldest son got married a year ago and therefore I am looking forward to be a grandmother in a few years from now. As I grow old, I plan to explore and travel the universe as my children continue to grow and acquire autonomy.
Professionally, I have not set a clear goal for my social work career but I am still driven by the desire to work with seniors in the next five years. With previous experience in working with children, I have great desire to work with senior citizens because I can use the knowledge gained while working with children and apply it to when dealing with older adults. Among all these life components I want, I would want to create a balance between studying, traveling, parenting and engaging senior adults.
Being an immigrant, I moved to Canada like three years ago and for my long term goal I would want to eventually get back to Saudi Arabia and be a strong force in the social justice movement. The social justice movement is starting to be recognized in Saudi Arabia and that I why I want to go back and be considered one of the pioneers and pillars of the same movement. With doing this, I would also love to share my experience and knowledge that I will have gained during my study with other social work fellows, the human rights department with emphasis on women.
My experience in writing this assignment
In as much as I have identified what I want to study and who I want to become, I have not set clear goals yet but I am very positive that I will end up where I want to be upon my graduation. As at now, I am still searching for an identity in social work. For me social work is truly an eye opener to me and the many processes in social work will help me find out my exact goals at the end of the program. To some extent, writing my personal mission statement was challenging because I thought we are needed to have clear goals before you could write a successful one. Before making a decision on which group to work with I will still need to work on myself morally and ethically, as well as learn how to communicate with others and building sustainable relationships as I climb up my success ladder.
The most challenging
It is challenging to deal with children because they have different opinions on who to respect and who not. Understanding ageism and the reason why adults are discriminated upon was challenging as well. Understanding how sustainability can be created from the self-care model with respect to values within social work and ethical responsibilities also proved to be challenging. As I try to achieve life balance, it was not easy to be a social worker, a wife, a teacher and a mother at the same time. While working with diverse people, understanding their beliefs separate from my own while helping them to know their self worth was equally challenging. At the same time it could be very easy to lose yourself while trying to help others. This was challenging because I had to ensure self awareness and self-discipline as we brought people to light of social work practice.
How can my mission be of benefit to social work leaders?
While working in a profession with people from diverse courses, with diverse experiences, beliefs and values, my personal mission can help bring people together and foster working together in a team. My mission that runs with empathy and compassion will help people bond together in difficult situations, gain tolerance and an open minded attitude for people with limited capabilities.
