Executive Director Ed Shurna is in South Korea this week, part of a week-long trip that includes serving as keynote speaker at the Seoul Welfare Foundation’s international forum.
Ed was asked to speak to social workers about the history and principles of community organizing. CCH’s executive director of nine years has worked 45 years as a community organizer, most of it in Chicago’s neighborhoods.
Over the years, Ed has led organizing trainings in 10 other countries. He designed and implemented organizer training for German social workers in Germany and the U.S., assisting in the formation of a countrywide association of German Community Organizers in the mid-1990s. In October 2005, Ed was invited to return to meet with his German students at a nationwide conference in Hamburg. Ed’s work has taken him to Angola, Romania, South Africa and Central America, including a year spent working and living at a coffee cooperative in Santa Fe, Panama.
Seoul’s welfare foundation, begun in 2004, plans to train welfare service personnel in the implementation of community organizing. Ed’s trip will include a meeting with Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon and visits to a local homeless shelter, Gayang 5 Social Welfare Center and the Korean Organizing Project.
– Anne Bowhay, Media