w/Jamie L. Nappi, MSW, LCSW: Building A Human Rights Based Study Abroad & Global Social Work Education Leadership

A life-changing “yes” doesn’t always come with a plan or even a passport. Sometimes it begins with a dream...quite literally.  

Jamie L. Nappi joins us in the driveway to tell the story of how an unexpected invitation to travel to Vietnam open her ideas about facing fear, leadership, and what it really means to learn from another community. Her guiding mantra from Thich Nhat Hanh “Fearlessness is not only possible, it is the ultimate joy. When you touch non-fear, you are free”. 

Jamie brings years of clinical social work experience plus doctoral-level research to a question global education often avoids: how do we build study abroad programs that are ethical, rights-based, and genuinely collaborative? 

We dig into servant leadership, bi-directional learning, and the practical tools she has built for a Vietnam faculty-led study abroad course including a geopolitical positionality self-assessment and a human rights checklist rooted in participation, non-discrimination, strength-based practice, capacity building, activism, and accountability. The goal is simple and hard: center host voices, slow down, and stop confusing “helping” with imposing. We also get real about the risks: saviorism, orientalism, and how social media can turn people into content. Jamie shares why consent and dignity matter in photography, and why sharing images raise urgent questions about privacy, self-determination, and who benefits from a story being told.

If you care about ethical travel, human rights-based social work, or study abroad done right, subscribe, share this conversation with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can find us.

Special thanks:

We could not have got started without Ellen and her fabulous branding and photos. If you need a photographer or graphic designer, esnapsone@gmail.com

Johnny Peacock Music for the music into/outro. Looking for a custom sound? Reach out to Johnny.  johnnypeacockmusic@gmail.com 

My cousin Gab for sharing your expertise. The best resource and expert to help pull this together. For any podcast assistance, contact gabdac@gmail.com 

Monmouth University: School of Social Work; Department of Communication (WXCM 88.9FM); and the Department of Psychology for all your support. Go Hawks

My capstone committee, and my fabulous professors and mentors, for pushing me past my comfort zone

“Team B” for supporting this…so honored to know you all

Special thanks to my children, just because <3

humanUpNJ

Transcript

Welcome And Campus Updates

Donna 0:04

Good evening and welcome to It's Donna in the Driveway at 88.9 FM. Happy Monday, everyone. That was just the "Odd Couple" by Weezer. I hope everybody is having a beautiful, beautiful today. Today was absolutely spectacular out. It is beautiful on campus here at Monmouth University, and we have Accepted Students Day. So it's been so great watching all the new students and their families joining us here on campus. It's been a really amazing day here. So I hope everybody here has had a great weekend. It was pretty nice out the entire weekend. And um I'm just really excited. I want to also mention that April is autism awareness month. So let's be aware of what is happening and let's be mindful of people's preferences. And I guess that's it. I'm a little all over the place because I actually had a pretty spectacular day. But what is making it even better is the person that is in the driveway with us today. So this evening on your evening commute, we have with us Jamie L. Nappi, who's an MSW and LCSW, and a specialist professor here at Monmouth University in the School of Social Work. Give it up for social work. Whoop whoop. Jamie has worked as a clinical social worker in juvenile justice, children's system of care, community mental health, and hospital-based crisis intervention. She has worked both full and part-time in private practice, specializing in trauma and related clinical presentations from anxiety, depression, personality disorders, chronic illness, and addiction, as well as being a LCSW clinical supervisor. So she supervises students and candidates. As mentioned, not only is Jamie a specialist professor in the School of Social Work, she's also a DSW candidate, hopefully May 2026, getting ready for our defense presentation. And she also supports the School of Social Work's professional education program, including introduction to mindfulness-based psychotherapy and radical acceptance and dialectical behavior therapy. And for those of you who have listened before, we've talked about those topics. Jamie's work currently, and the focus of her capstone, is exploring strategies for measuring and strengthening rights-based practices in global education. So for study abroads. She is especially interested in how these approaches can foster bi-directional

Meet Jamie Nappi And Her Work

Donna 2:50

learning, in which faculty, students, and host communities mutually exchange knowledge, perspectives, and practice insights. And just to toot Jamie's horn a little bit, because we're in the driveway, beep beep. Jamie is also the recipient of the Outstanding Adjunct Award at Monmouth University in 2017. And since I traveled abroad with Jamie in uh Italy, I will tell you that she makes a mean cup of coffee in the morning. So everybody, give a warm welcome to Jamie Nappi. Yay! You're on. Hi Jamie.

Jamie 3:30

Hi, Donna.

Donna 3:31

Welcome to the driveway.

Jamie 3:33

Thank you so much.

Donna 3:34

Thank you so much for being here.

Jamie 3:36

Absolutely. Thanks for asking.

Donna 3:38

Oh my gosh. I'm so excited to see you here tonight. Um, so I you have just like this wealth of experience and this wealth of information. And I am so excited to hear about your journey. Are you willing to share your journey with us a little bit here tonight?

Jamie 3:57

Absolutely. So there's a story, but uh definitely my journey to this point has been a long one, you know,

A Dream That Sparked Vietnam

Jamie 4:05

and I feel really fortunate for the route that has led me to this point today. Um, there was always a lifelong goal to get the doctoral degree, but I'm a parent and for the most part was uh needing to be present for my son. And so I put that goal off. And I had really never intended to become a leader because I always historically viewed leaders as extremely extroverted, and I am definitely a more introverted person in public spaces, and I always considered myself as a team member. However, the story I'm going to tell will demonstrate how I became a leader in the educational currency and as a doctoral student. So in the late spring of 2011, I had this interesting experience. I woke up in the morning and I had this immediate sensation of like really, truly just happiness. And I realized that I had just had a vivid dream about the most beautiful, colorful birds flying straight up into the air. And I remember thinking to myself, you know, something great is going to happen today. So I got into the shower. I had to go to work at my uh private practice, and I was also adjuncting at Monmouth at the time. And when I got out, I saw that I had a missed call. And it was Dr. Kelly Ward who used to work here. And so she left me a message and it said, um, this is time limited, so call me back. And, you know, I'm an anxious person, so I thought something was wrong. So I gave her a call right back. I wasn't even getting dressed, you know, I wasn't even dressed yet. But I didn't know that this call was going to absolutely change my life, you know, and the trajectory I was on. So I called her back and she asked me if I wanted to go on a trip to Vietnam with Dr. Mama and her, you know, also Kelly Ward. And I remember thinking I must still be dreaming. And I just said yes. And she said, you know, do you want to know what we're doing? And I said, you know, whatever it is, I'm in. So she explained we were traveling to an NGO to collaborate on training workshops related to general social work approaches. And that trip changed my life in so many ways because what Dr. Ward and Dr. Mama did not know was that although I felt capable of teaching those contents that they requested, I felt nothing like the birds earlier in my dreams soaring into the sky. I was fearful of flying, and I didn't even have a passport. So I had also never traveled anywhere outside of the United States except for Canada. And also I had been interested in studying abroad in high school and college, but I was a young person in early recovery from substance use disorder, so I was afraid to really stray far from my support network. So it was like a regret I had not studying, you know, abroad ever. And so I also had this interest in Vietnam, particularly in the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. And I studied him a lot through my practice of Zen Buddhism. And as a Buddhist, I often use quotes as mantras to glean clarity. So one such quote by Thich Nhat Hanh is, "fearlessness is not only possible, it is the ultimate joy. When you touch non-fear, you are free". And so he said this, but in hindsight, in relation to this quote, I now understand why I instantly said yes to that trip in 2011, but I did not know what I would learn about leadership. Wow. So, you know, um, should I proceed more?

Donna 7:50

Yes, absolutely. You just you're literally blowing me away.

Jamie 7:54

So, really what I learned from that trip and then two subsequent trips to Vietnam much later in 2023 and 2024 is that my feelings of ambivalence towards being referred to as an expert would lead me to a new path forward for rights-based social work and global education leadership that was really going to be operationalized by the work I did in this program, you know, getting my doctoral. And um, you know, initially I had a different topic, but my capstone advisor, Dr. Ann Deepak, really encouraged me to focus on the work I was doing in Vietnam. And she helped me ground what I was doing by telling me to seek a framework, you know, and so the framework that I chose was called the Human Rights Measurement Scales and Social Work, and that is by McPherson and Able, and they created the framework really and operationalized it in an article in 2022. And the tenets of the framework are participation, non-discrimination, a strength-based perspective, micro and macro integration, capacity building, community engagement, interdisciplinary collaboration, activism, and accountability. So through this rights-based leadership framework, it challenges exploitive practices such as orientalism, colonization, saviorism, and is a genuine call for acknowledgement that a power differential exists in global education as well. So, you know, I became really interested in avoiding those things in my own travels and how I collaborate abroad in training classes that I was doing in Vietnam. And I also in my program here at the DSW took a class in leadership. Uh like, and I chose servant leadership to focus on in terms of how I also frame my capstone.

Donna 9:56

That was second semester, right?

Jamie 9:58

Yeah. Yeah. And so servant leadership really is to apply this to social work education is most effective when carried out in measures that hold collaborative relationships, and when the hierarchy is aware and able to yield to the power in relationships and work toward an equitable arrangement that is beneficial for all. So basically it's about co-learning and the approach of just really solidarity in relationships that when you're abroad. And I and I got the idea actually to write a study abroad course as part of how I was going to carry out the capstone. So just to continue a little further in this and wrap it up in terms of like how I got to this point in getting the doctoral degree in human rights leadership, I feel this style demonstrates how true leaders band together in an interdependent way with the communities that they work within. And I would like to connect this interdependence back to the birds in my dream, and that there is a word for how they all flew together that reminds me of the concept of leading each other through solidarity, and that word is "murmuration". And the literal definition of murmuration is a large group of birds that all fly together and seamlessly change direction together. The less literal meaning may be interpreted as a synthesis of unity, flexibility, and adaptability. And so what I realize now that without centering the voice of my hosts abroad

Rights-Based Leadership And Servant Leadership

Jamie 11:30

and engaging in deep reflection with my students, all that may be hoped for is misguided charity instead of the solidarity and partnerships that servant leadership would dictate. This servant leadership leads to strong, sustainable, bi-directional learning that ultimately relies on an evolution toward leadership that is humbled by authentic cultural exchange. And so in my project, I'm also advocating for accessibility for all students to share in this vision of leadership through rights-based social work and global education, through the implementation of the rights-based study of broad course, the way that I wrote it through the framework of McPherson and Abel. And that's all I have to talk about in terms of my leadership journey.

Donna 12:12

Wow. You have literally blown me away. I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes. Um one, because I remember some of the things that you were talking about. And two, I didn't realize that your journey was um uh founded or or began with that dream. So thank you for sharing that very personal story with all of us listening.

Jamie 12:41

We never know what's gonna happen.

Donna 12:43

Yeah, you never know what's gonna happen. Um there was a couple of things like fearlessness, right? Um you were talking about what was the quote again, if you wouldn't mind repeating that.

Jamie 12:54

Yeah, it's a Thich Nhat Hanh quote. Just give me a moment because I don't want to butcher it. "Fearlessness is not only possible, it is the ultimate joy. When you touch non-fear, you are free."

Donna 13:13

It's beautiful. That's beautiful. Um, and funny because that's it, it seems like a lot of us came from this kind of framework, but not as eloquently as um you put it there. So thank you. That was beautiful. I have to ask just some basic questions. First of all, when you get that call from Dr. Ward, how long does it take you to get all of those things together for a person that has never done anything before? I mean, that was just a such a visceral yes without even knowing anything that was happening.

Jamie 13:45

Yeah. I just got the passport like the next day because I think I had like six weeks to travel at that point.

Donna 13:52

Wow.

Jamie 13:53

Um, if that it was like, yeah, because we went in July of 2011. The reason I came to the idea of study abroad was because I was doing those international collaborations there. I thought, you know, these are places I would like to take students because I was learning so much as uh an adjunct professor going abroad to do those training opportunities. So, you know, the first trip was a trip to a place called Friends for Street Children, which is a Catholic organization in Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. So it's down south. That was, you know, formerly known as Saigon. And that is uh an organization that actually has development centers for children where, you know, maybe their parents are still in contact with them, but it gives them the opportunity to have school and food and shelter, and uh potentially like the parents are struggling, you know, because they're impoverished. Um, but they're still in contact, some of the parents with their children. Anyway, I was working with um the social work staff there, which are were really like they were trying to operationalize social work at the time in 2011. Um there was uh an effort to say, you know, they wanted a more professional social work, even though the social work that they were doing in Vietnam was just fine. And that's what struck me, is they were really tending very well to these kids in this NGO, which is a non-government organization. I know you you asked what that is also. And so it struck me that I was learning more than any of the information I was bringing in to teach. You know, they were just looking for ways to say that they were professionalizing and they wanted uh to coordinate with social workers from the United States. Um there was an effort with different universities uh to to provide training. But I really I learned much more from them than I think they learned from me. That's what I left with the sensation um of feeling very grateful for the knowledge that I acquired there.

Donna 16:07

Right. It it's really amazing what happens when you you start these relationships or these journeys, and you think that you know you're going in to do the training, and then you suddenly realize like I'm the one who was trained the whole time. That's exactly what happens every day and every week that I'm here, honestly, because I learned so much more about everybody that sits across the table and about the work that you're doing, and really you've kind of left me with no words, so I hope you're prepared.

Jamie 16:35

I love to talk about it.

Donna 16:37

No, I I want you to to talk about all of it. Um, one of the other just clarifications, because not everybody listening is part of the academic community or not part of um Monmouth University. You mentioned a few "isms", what I like to call the isms. So can you just review some of them and um discuss

Avoiding Saviorism Through Cultural Humility

Donna 16:55

what each of those mean and how they might translate into um your work?

Jamie 17:01

Sure. So some of the things that I want to avoid in the study abroad that I that I'm going to teach are the idea that people are going to other countries to promote saviorism, which means like imposing interventions that are not really appropriate to the healing practices that already exist in the culture that you're going to visit. You know, so one of the things that's a concern for, particularly in Asia, uh Vietnam, if we're going to travel there, is the idea of Orientalism, which is a way that people look at Asian cultures through a Western lens, which is really inappropriate because it's objectifying to culture. So what I would want my students to know is if they're going to visit a place, they understand the meaning, whether it's cultural or spiritual, or a helping social inclusion site, which is all going to be part of my study abroad. In terms of the itinerary, they will go to what we would call in the United States social service agencies, but in Vietnam, it translates more to social inclusion. So those would be sites like orphanages where children live that were maybe orphaned by conditions abroad. And might we might be visiting places where they treat substance use disorder, the same types of places that we have here, but moving in, they might have different healing practices and different ideas about what might be an intervention. And so what I would want my students to do is observe those interventions and not impose, you know, necessarily that we do in the states.

Donna 18:51

Could you share a little bit? Do you know any of the interventions or like any of the models that that you students might be learning about or um kind of observing?

Jamie 19:03

When you're there, you know, we would be a lot of times like historically, there's so much colonization in Vietnam. So a lot of the different types of models there were Buddhist-based originally, you know, prior to um 1975. And so we'll just leave it at that. And then after that, um, there were organizations founded for treatment of different conditions that evolved after that time period that were informed by um more government or reorganization. So what I would want people to do is not form a single story because the way that they approach different, maybe what we would consider social problems or social inclusion might be different than what we think in the West, right? But also might be different regionally between different regions of the country, just like we tend to address things differently within the United States. What I would want my students to do is not form a single story. I want my students to go and observe and have dialogue and do deep listening and bear witness to what those healing practices are and watch as opinions arise whether they think something might be different or bad or good. I just really want my students to see things as just in the moment. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. And not form opinions. So what I did with uh my research is I've I've adapted these forms that I put in my class. And one of them is an assessment of geopolitical positionality prior to travel. So that's how my students would would prepare.

Donna 21:02

And then can I back up for a second? What does that form look like? Because I was going to ask you, I was writing down um

Jamie 21:07

So it's it's called a geopolitical identity self-assessment chart. And I adapted that from the authors Tang and Cozier. Uh they wrote an article in 2024 that addresses some some of the components on here. And so what the students would be doing is looking at their own geopolitical aspects and then complete what are called reflective prompts. And so we would look at our worldviews, not just the students, but the professors that would be going abroad prior to travel. So it's things like your nationality, your citizenship status, your ethnicity and ancestry, language and communication, global north and south positioning. So what that has to do with is how do global inequalities, uh, economic Economic, political, or cultural influence perspectives, and access to resources. So, really grounding ourselves before travel and understanding those types of things. Our own political systems and governance, conflicts and peace contexts. So, worldviews. Overall, what I'd say is that we're grounding ourselves in worldviews before we travel so that we have the idea of consideration of what's going on anywhere we travel. Because my class is adaptable not just to Vietnam, but but anywhere, really. This is important when you leave your relevant context, right, here in the United States and moving into another space geographically, you know, more globally. And also, any student that travels on this has a different relative context. So that's that's one check and balance that I want for us to participate in doing prior to the travel.

Donna 22:57

So it could be any major, or is this only for social work students? I think you mentioned that.

Jamie 23:01

It's approved by Global Education at Monmouth University. Yes. It's open to any major. It's an undergraduate course. You have to have like 30 credits to take the course. But it is grounded in social work and human rights-based practice. So anyone who's going to take this class, the only thing I ask them to be willing to do is use these forms and think about their geopolitical positionality before traveling.

Donna 23:27

Okay, no, that's fair. And before we go any further, it's uh we're coming up on the 5 30 hour. So let's take a break. I'll play some of uh Jamie's selected music and I'll give you all a break, and then we're gonna come back and talk human

Break And Music Reset

Donna 23:42

rights. So uh we're here with Jamie Nappi and see you shortly. And we're back. Thank you for coming back for the second half of It's Donna in the Driveway here with Jamie Nappi, who is a DSW candidate here at Monmouth

Building The Vietnam Study Abroad

Donna 24:01

University, along with being a specialist professor in the School of Social Work here at Monmouth. Um, Jamie was just sharing with us her journey into human rights leadership and building this study abroad class, which right now the I guess an initial title is uh "Social and Ethical Concerns in Vietnam". And uh Jamie and I were just chit-chatting a little bit during the break here, and I'm I'm trying to figure out when it's gonna start because I don't know, Jamie, I might be interested in joining.

Jamie 24:34

It's August of 2027. Okay. It's going to be the class, but it will be over the summer, probably summer C, starting in May. The travel will be in August.

Donna 24:45

Okay.

Jamie 24:45

So next next summer.

Donna 24:48

Wow. Oh my gosh, I know you've waited a long time to to get this in there. How many times have you been to Vietnam?

Jamie 24:55

Three. Uh the class will be in north northern Vietnam and Hanoi. Different types of things that will happen is we're working with a university called uh Vinh University, and they will host us, so there'll be dorms. Uh the students and the professors that will travel will have opportunity to interact with students in Vietnam, and we are going to visit social and cultural sites. Um things are going to be like women's cooperatives and uh organizations that work with HIV, substance use, and also children that have lost their family members to various types of things. We will also visit the Vietnamese Ethnology Museum because a lot of people think about culture in a one-dimensional way when really there are 54 cultural groups and even with different languages in Vietnam. So we'll be visiting and learning about all different types of things, but then there'll be a symposium where the students from Monmouth and the students in Vietnam will present together at the end of the trip.

Donna 26:15

Oh, wow. That's amazing. That's amazing. Oh, I love that. Um, we were also talking about the human rights aspects and how this is human rights-based. So it's uh human rights leadership. So I just have to kind of redirect the conversation there. Can you tell us a little bit more about how this is founded in human rights?

Jamie 26:37

So, as I said, I'm using the human rights method and social work scales. And what I did is I developed a practice checklist for everyone to fill out every time we visit an organization when we're in Vietnam. And the points of interest on that scale are participation. And so students would fill out this form and the it asks for participation. Have I actively involved clients and communities in the decisions that affect their lives? So that's a check and balance for imposing things that don't belong. And there's another one which is non-discrimination. And for that point, the students and the faculty would ask themselves, am I ensuring fairness and equality and addressing any types of discrimination and all forms? And that could be just even like mindset of, you know, so it's like self-reflection on moving into spaces where something may seem like a different approach, and that doesn't necessarily mean that it should be judged as an effective approach. Also, we're always evaluating while we're there whether or not we're working from a strength perspective. And so the question for that would be: am I identifying and building upon the strengths and resources of individuals and communities? So those are authentic, unique individual healing practices that the communities are are teaching us about and that we are really moving through spaces from a tr strength-based perspective. And then with micro and macro integration, the question connected to that would be: am I connecting individual-level interventions to larger, larger social policy and systemic issues? So thinking about how to connect the dots between smaller systems into community systems, into policies that govern systems, and really learning about social work in Vietnam, really learning about public policy in Vietnam and how the government supports social inclusion there. Also, capacity building. We would be examining that by asking the question: have I supported the development of skills and knowledge and empowerment within clients and communities? And then community and interdisciplinary collaboration is another point of evaluation. The question for that would be that we would all ask ourselves: am I collaborating effectively with community members and professionals from other fields? And then number seven on the scale would be activism. Have I engaged in advocacy or social action to promote social justice and systemic change? And then accountability. Am I maintaining transparency, ethical responsibility, and adherence to human rights principles? So that's the application of human rights to the program. And so when we visit all those organizations, such as the Women's Cooperative, et cetera, we would ask ourselves these questions and then journal about it. That would be the assignments backing up the human rights application

Human Rights Checklists And Journaling

Jamie 29:55

of this course.

Donna 29:57

I was gonna ask that. I was gonna ask how I I was literally writing it after filling out the scale, what is the process to process the information? Like

Jamie 30:06

journals. Yeah.

Donna 30:06

Journaling.

Jamie 30:07

There's a yeah, there's a checklist and then you would everybody would pick the ones that were most impactful and write journals on that.

Donna 30:18

Okay. So there's no there's not necessarily a prompt. The person has agency in order to select the one that um held the most weight for them or was most impactful for them?

Jamie 30:29

To elaborate on, yeah.

Donna 30:30

Okay.

Jamie 30:31

Mm-hmm. But the idea is to do all of to to check in with all of them because that's what make this makes this course come from a social work perspective and also grounds it in human rights. And as I said, it's an elective. Anybody can take it because they're going to learn about economy in Vietnam. They're going to learn about social and spiritual aspects of Vietnam, and they're going to learn about different sites that are of importance historically. So I really, it's good for anybody: history, business majors, anthropology majors, psychology majors, anyone who's interested in human beings, and that's the whole point, is getting to know people better, you know, and really, really bearing witness without imposing a bunch of ideas. It's just really taking it all in.

Donna 31:23

Right. Um, part of my journey was a little bit similar to yours. Like I had never been anywhere. So my first study abroad experience was when we were in Italy with Professor uh Hogan and um and Joelle. Right. And we went for the summer. And I have to tell you, when I came back, I I truly felt transformed just going and seeing a a different perspective, right? And there was so many different ways that I can apply what they were doing in certain places and spaces in Italy here that would make things so much better. Well, first of all, I have to say, and and not to be nasty to New Jersey food in any way, because New Jersey and New York have pretty great pizza, but that pizza in Naples, I will never forget it. I have never tasted anything like that. Um, but just seeing the rich history and being able to have some time in your course. Do you have any kind of free time to go explore or take other opportunities for like personal time or even as your group to kind of process together?

Jamie 32:32

On the trip that I'm planning. Yes. It's an undergraduate, so it's very, very structured. Um, yeah, it's going to be structured 24-7.

Donna 32:42

Okay.

Jamie 32:43

But we will visit different types of things like a temple and we'll go hiking and go by water. We'll do we'll do all different types of things. Um, besides the uh social and cultural visits. Yeah, we're going to check out like landscapes and um different areas of interest. So um mostly we'll be spending a lot of time though with the people from Vinh University learning with them and listening.

Donna 33:13

And listening.

Jamie 33:13

Yeah. I mean, if if if I was to apply this to our the trip to Italy, the study abroad in Sorrento. So they had we work with a school in Sorrento, Italy as well for that brief faculty-led study abroad. My trip's a brief faculty-led study abroad. So you travel for two weeks, but you're engaged in the course uh for a bit longer, probably 12 weeks. And we do things preemptively, we do things while we're there, and then we do some things right when we come back, just like the course we took for uh Sorrento. And one of the things I would say that we did in Sorrento, which would mirror kind of what I would do in Vietnam, is how we visited the different sites, right? We went to a site where they treated uh substance use disorder, and we really followed a policy and protocol like we would in the United States. We didn't take pictures of the clients. We uh were bearing witness in that they all told their stories, we listened. We didn't get defensive when they asked us about policies in the United States about the length of a treatment stay, because what we learned about in Italy is that their short-term treatment is 18 months for substance use disorder, and we know very well that it's about four weeks, if you're lucky, in the United States. And we learned a lot about like their trajectory of treatment and outcomes and how they incorporate learning a trade into substance use disorder. And I would say we learned a lot. We learned a lot, we learned about ourselves. We also had those conversations, and we really were able to have dialogue with the people in Italy, um, between Italy and us in terms of our approach to uh services and treatment. Uh, but also we were able to answer some hard questions. And I think that that's what I what I would like. That's leadership. That's not being an expert, that's being a humble person, going abroad and and learning and really considering how that shapes you as a human being. And hopefully what I'm hoping for my students is that it it shapes their outlook for the longer term in terms of being open-minded and learning and knowing that there are there is much to learn every single day. You know, I'm a lifelong learner. I'm not young being in this doctoral program (both laughing), you know, uh, neither are you. You're a little younger than me. But you know,

Donna 35:40

Six months. That doesn't count.

Jamie 35:41

And and but but you know, here we are. And and it's and it's and it's good to be humbled every single day. I think it keeps us active, it keeps us curious, you know, uh, it keeps us um respectful and non-judgmental, and that's really what I'm hoping to get out of this.

Donna 36:00

And uh so I you know it's it's very funny that you brought that up because like when I'm training clinicians, I I worked in uh long-term care for years, really, really long time ago. And the one thing that I I'll never forget, my first supervisor told me is you always knock on the door, and you remember when you walk into a room, even if it's in a facility, you're walking into somebody's space in somebody's home. And that's something that I've taken with me every moment. So even if somebody comes to my private practice and they walk in the door, I treat it as if it's their home because it's their space and I'm protecting that space. That's exactly how the study abroad is, right? You're going into somebody else's house. So even if you just kind of reverse that situation and say, How would I feel if somebody walked in the door? And I and I say that about even BCBAs, right? Like, I don't want somebody walking in my house and telling me how to raise my kids, take care of my dog, like any other kind of behavior intervention. But there takes some kind of um again that humbleness and meeting the person where they are and honoring their experience and honoring their space, respecting their space.

Jamie 37:10

And centering the voices of your hosts is the most important. Just like we our ethics are to center the voices of our clients in the United States. It's no different. Um, one of the things I really worked on was finding protocol for how to even take photographs, you know. And that moves into the idea of saviorism, is that unfortunately when service learning is not grounded in human rights, it's it can be very exploitive in that people start to take pictures of people that that leave them looking very vulnerable, or that might be embarrassing, or they might not have control over the dissemination, like how that picture is distributed. And so that's one of the things I really want to focus on is that if you're going to take a picture, that everybody has a way to morally evaluate that and whether or not they would be comfortable handing that picture to

Ethics Of Witnessing And Photography

Jamie 38:10

the person that they took it of or the environment that they took it of, that that's not exploitative. My I did a whole case study for this project about study abroad and examining an existing social work study abroad, and I found out that, you know, in that study abroad, in my opinion, there were a lot of violations to the standards that I've set up for this. And so it gave me really good ideas, but I also think that this is very valuable to global education, even when you're learning about global social work in the United States. I would like to apply a lot of this uh to how I'm teaching currently in my class, you know. But it's not just for social work because all professions need ethics in terms of what we're talking about. And it's really just slowing it down and leaving everyone to uh enjoy uh, you know, and and learning and and activating curiosity that hopefully will be lifelong.

Donna 39:06

Right. Um I just I'm glad you mentioned the the part about the photographs. Um I I sat in for your uh CEU, I guess it was a presentation on campus.

Jamie 39:18

Oh, for that was uh presentation for global understanding.

Donna 39:22

Yes. And you showed the very famous picture of the person in Vietnam and you talked about some of that. Can you just go through a very brief um part of your analysis because I just found it so interesting.

Jamie 39:37

A little girl and she lost her name, you know, they called her Napalm Girl, and her name is Kim Phuc. That's her name. And what happened is is she did survive that, you know, and um a person that is credited for that photograph is called Nick Ut. And he disseminated the picture because he felt like it would end the war, you know, and it did bring awareness to just how barbaric war can be, um, you know, and weapons, you know, that are used during war. And she moved on to be a survivor and an advocate and and really um actually a very good lesson on forgiveness, you know, if you if you read about her. And the issue I take with the picture is not so much what the intended outcome was, was that, but but yes, that this little girl was naked and it was public publicized so many times. It was published, sorry, so many times where she was naked, um, without her permission, you know. And um, you know, there was a motive involved in that that was for the greater good at the time, you know, that a photographer had an idea that it would bring awareness, you know, um, and end things, you know, um, because sometimes the most compassionate thing is just to have something end, right? Um, so that was the objective. But really, in terms of her privacy, she really even lost her name. She became this object of publicity, you know, that was being used in this certain way that I would not want people to bring awareness to anywhere. And I mean, we can even take it out of the context of Vietnam. But what's important is is that that image sat with me in terms of just like privacy, permission, informed consent, which are all, you know, social work values and the person's right to self-determination.

Donna 41:41

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. I just uh again, in in our geopolitical climate, right now, social media, there's pictures, there's images. I just want to kind of remind everyone that it is important that sometimes we take a picture and we share it and we're not realizing that it it could be someone with no name. Right to dehumanize and detach that human person from this picture. So I just again in the geopolitical climate, I just wanted to bring that up. So thank you for sharing that. You know, social media is so rampant right now with um images. Um but we only have about a few minutes left. So before I ask you my question, I want to ask you if there's any one thing that you want to share about your project that you can share with all the listeners. Like if you had to summarize it or if you

The Napalm Girl And Consent

Donna 42:40

had to advertise it, what would you say?

Jamie 42:42

I would say that I learned much more than I thought from I ever would from traveling abroad. I would say that it's for anybody who's interested in learning. It's not just for social work students. Um, so hopefully when the course opens up, we'll get people from all different majors because I think that mostly my hope is that it impacts lifelong learning and a trajectory for just really engaging with people in a respectful manner and really centering people like that are in maybe what we think as a host or a client status as the experts of their own lives. And so that's really what I would like to say. And I would be remiss if I did not congratulate you, Donna, on passing your defense today for your your doctoral uh project. So I would be remiss to know that I need to say congratulations live on the air because uh I'm I'm pretty excited for you.

Donna 43:49

So that was the the thank you, thank you. I'm so excited to and thank you to my committee members, Dr. Nau, Dr. Urbanski, and uh Professor Christa Hogan, you have all and Team B, shout out to Team B because if it wasn't for any of you and Dr. Deepak and uh Sanjana and everybody in the department, I don't think I ever would have made it through because it as I like to say, it takes a village, right? To raise a Donna. Absolutely. So I like to build the village and I like to sap its resources. So thank you. Thank you. Um, I hope none of my students are listening. I was gonna surprise them too much.

Jamie 44:30

I hope they are. Sorry.

Donna 44:32

No, it's all good. Thank you. I appreciate it. Um, that's probably why I'm extra smiley today and dancing in the booth as we were playing some music. But anyway, um, so before I get to how everybody can reach you, I want to ask you um, what is something that you like doing even though you don't necessarily do it well?

Jamie 44:53

Something I like doing that I necessarily don't do well. Singing.

Donna 44:58

Oh my gosh! You're (singing) "running up that hill..."

Jamie 45:03

I've not I definitely cannot hit that octave. But I love to sing in the shower and in my car, and I think it sounds great until um my satellite radio goes out and I hear what I really sound like.

Donna 45:20

Oh, okay. So maybe after we graduate and after we get through all the other things that we have to do, you and I will go for some singing lessons and we'll learn to sing. Right. I I don't want to break anybody's ears or have them run off the road right now. Jamie, it has been an absolute pleasure to have you here today. Thank you so much for joining us in the driveway. If anybody wants to reach you, how could they do that?

Jamie 45:45

At Jnappi@ monmouth.edu. It's probably the most frequently read email.

Donna 45:53

Okay. And once you get your um capstone defended and ready to go, I will share your website information on the replays, which you can find on BuzzSprout. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for joining us in the driveway. And for everybody listening tonight, thank you so much uh for hanging out in the driveway

Final Takeaways And How To Connect

Donna 46:10

with Jamie and I today. Um, any questions or if you need any more information, you can reach out to Jamie. You can also reach out to me at dsimon@monmouth.edu. I will see you next week for another conversation. And I'm not gonna tell you what that is yet. That's gonna be a surprise, but it is gonna be about human rights. And remember to take a breath, humanup N J, and know that the best conversations always happen in the driveway. Have a great week, everybody. Love and light to you all. Stay safe and stay well. See you next week.