Field Action Projects, 2005–2006 (pdf)
Extension activities denote the social responsibility of teaching institutes towards the problems and the emerging needs of society and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) has initiated and promoted several kinds of extension activities since its inception in 1936. The Institute has played a major role in piloting or pioneering new services and in initiating time-bound social work programmes within well-established organisations/systems, or outside them, with the objective of demonstrating to the public, the need for such services.
Medical social work in hospitals, social work in schools, the child guidance clinic, and social work in family courts, to name a few, were started as demonstration projects of the TISS. Termed as Field Action Projects (FAPs) in TISS, they have always played an integral role in the curriculum of social work education. These projects evolved out of a need to:
Through these projects, faculty members are in touch with the field, and, thus ensure that their teaching is in touch with social realities. Students are placed for field work in these projects, and, in the process of learning, they also contribute to its growth. The FAPs are the ‘laboratories’ for testing new approaches of social service delivery and strategies of intervention. The FAPs contribute to generating knowledge for teaching in classrooms and also allow testing of theories in field practice.
Much of what has evolved as social work theory is also essentially the outcome of practice. Field action projects are, thus, an integral part of the validation or revision of such a practice–theory continuum. These projects fulfill several objectives of professional education, and have evolved over the years due to various internal and external factors.
The FAPs have, over the years, demonstrated interventions with a wide variety of marginalised groups (women, children, youth, rural and urban communities) and issues (violence against women, formal and non-formal education, physical and mental health, communalism, human rights, child rights). The FAPs address a wide range of issues with a broad goal of a more equal and just society, through capacity building, empowering people to exercise more informed choice, and secure their rights.
Today, the FAPs extend beyond Mumbai to Thane, Navi Mumbai, Raigad, Sangli, Pune, Nanded, Yavatmal, Nashik, Aurangabad, Tuljapur and Wardha in Maharashtra. There are currently more than 70 field staff employed by the FAPs of TISS. These include project coordinators, social workers, programme staff, administrative and support staff.
At present, there are 24 ongoing field action projects — 16 in the Main Campus at Mumbai and the remaining 8 at our Tuljapur Campus.
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