“Half of the success depends on you, and the half depends on the support of your family”

Lamiya Rzayeva-Ahmadli, who is a young well-known social worker specialized in program development and management, youth empowerment, child protection, and education advancement and mainly worked at local and international civil society organizations and involved in the implementation of the number of projects in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Germany.

She has more than 8 years’ experience in the field and currently working as chairperson of Azerbaijan Youth Union. Throughout her experiences, she has gained a lot of success and achievements at both the local and international levels.

Lamiya has represented Azerbaijan at various international events. One of them is the “A20 Global Child Protection Summit” in China organized by Alibaba Group in 2018. She gave a speech on the current situation in the field of child protection in Azerbaijan and received the Child Protection Award for her research work in child protection.

She has been awarded Cross Culture Fellowship from the Institute for International Relations (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, ifa – is a German mediator in the field of international cultural exchange, based in Stuttgart and Berlin / Germany) and had two months internship at AWO Bremen – one of the biggest social services providing CSO in Germany. She was involved as a social worker in the largest refugee camp in Bremen. Working at AWO played a significant role in her professional growth giving her comprehensive knowledge about the development and management of services for refugees and migrants and practical skills to have in hand as a social worker who is needed to work at those services.

Lamiya is a fellow of EU-funded Eastern Partnership Civil Society Facility – Regional Action and she proposed and successfully implemented a project on “Raising Media Awareness on Social Issues” (RAMSI) in 2019.

She is always in the spotlight with innovative ideas about social work. One of these innovations was the establishment of the “Social Work Research and Resource Center” when she was the Executive Director of the Azerbaijan Social Work Public Union. This great idea was selected among over 100 nominates as one of the best social innovations in the social field in Central Asia and South Caucasus, was awarded the International Social Award, established by “ARGO – Civil Society Development Association” (Kazakhstan).

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There are a number of prestigious conferences in the field of social work. One of them is the biennial conference "Social Work and Social Development" (SWSD). Lamiya represented Azerbaijan at the conference in Dublin, Ireland in 2018, and co-delivered a speech at the conference on "Social Work in Azerbaijan". Participation in this conference is the dream of every young social worker. Lamiya also became this dream reality and played a role model for many social workers and students.

If you ask social work students "why did you choose social work," part of the answer will be “Lamiya's success in social work and how she is passionate about her profession”.

Many social work students are encouraged to become social work by seeing Lamiya's achievements.

Lamiya received a bachelor's degree in social work and a master's degree in social research methods in Azerbaijan. However, one of her biggest dreams during her academic and professional carrier was to study abroad. She achieved this dream in 2019 and is currently studying for the Analysis and Design of Social Protection Systems (MA) at the Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences in Germany. In addition to her education, she also works as a research assistant at the Center for Sustainable Development (INZE) of the university.

She always considers education important and emphasizes that especially girls’ education has a significant impact on the development of society. According to Lamiya Rzayeva-Ahmadli: “Half of the success depends on you, and the half depends on the support of your family”.

Lamiya is sure that, investment for education, especially education for girls will never be wasted: “Definitely, believe in your daughters and support their education. Thus, you will both make her future reliable, and make our society develop”.

 

CNC/Azerbaijan

April 2020