CDSEJ Community Partnership Action Award

2026 Community Partnership Action Award

Presented by Commission for Diversity, Social, and Economic Justice, the Community Partnership Action (CPA) Award honors the contributions of schools and departments of social work and social work students (BSW, MSW, PhD/DSW) in advancing community partnership action. The CPA Award will be presented during the Carl A. Scott Memorial Lecture at the 2026 CSWE Annual Conference in Atlanta. "Community" is broadly defined as a self-organized network of people with a common agenda, cause, or interest and is not limited by physical locality.

Program Award Winner

Hawaiʻi Pacific University School of Social Work
The Hawaiʻi Pacific University (HPU) School of Social Work is dedicated to a practice rooted in pono—the restoration of balance and rightness within our communities. By prioritizing reciprocal collaboration, we honor the wisdom of ʻāina (the land) and its people, moving beyond traditional service-learning toward true community partnership. Our programs offer specialized pathways that reflect the unique needs of our students and Hawaiʻi and the Pacific region:

• BSW (In-Person): Our undergraduate program is held on-site to foster direct community engagement. Students participate in CIRCELS (Culturally Immersive Reciprocal Community-Engaged Learning and Service) events, learning alongside community practitioners to bridge the gap between classroom theory and aloha ʻāina (love for the land) in action.
• MSW (Online Only): Our graduate program is delivered fully online, offering two distinct focuses:
  • PONO (Pacific and Original Nations Orientation): A focus centered on Indigenous ways of knowing and ancestral wisdom.
  • MLVA (Military and Veteran Affairs): A track dedicated to supporting the unique needs of service members, veterans, and their families.

By centering ʻike kupuna (ancestral wisdom) and professional excellence, HPU School of Social Work ensures that social work education is about learning with and from the community. Our graduates emerge with a deep sense of kuleana (responsibility), ready to act as allies in achieving collective well-being.  
 

Individual Award Winner

Sangmi Kim, MSW
Sangmi Kim, MSW, is a PhD candidate in Social Work at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, expected Spring 2027, with a graduate minor through the Intercollegiate Graduate Statistics and Data Science Program. Guided by the belief that community voices should inform policy, practice, and technology design, she connects social work practice, community engagement, and data-informed methods to address youth suicide prevention, mental health disparities, and data justice.

She is a top-level licensed social worker in South Korea, the country’s highest national social work licensure level, and a 2025-2027 CSWE Doctoral Student Policy Fellow. As a graduate student principal investigator, Kim leads community-engaged work with Korean and Korean American communities.

Her Community Engagement Academy Grant project, AI Digital Storytelling to Address Social Isolation and Prevent Suicide, uses bilingual, culturally grounded storytelling to support expression, reflection, and connection. Her Graduate Student Research Award project, Interpreting Youth Distress with Multimodal Signals Using the Data Justice Framework: A Mixed-Methods Pilot Study on AI-Supported Gatekeeping in Korean Immigrant Families, examines how caregivers recognize adolescents’ distress across digital and cultural contexts. She also founded Early Morning Rising, an online peer-led support network for Korean women in the United States, and co-founded a peer support community for mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder.

Across her research and community work, she seeks to help communities, practitioners, and institutions recognize distress and silence while honoring resilience in community life.