Social worker Neysa Fanwick’s (pictured at left) passion for helping others was boundless.
As a dedicated advocate for people oppressed by unjust practices in the criminal justice system, foster care, and education systems, Fanwick helped people recognize their strengths, rights and potential for change.
“She saw a lot of opportunities to help people,” said her father, Kerry Fanwick. “She naturally saw a lot of unfairness in the world. She wanted to do something towards correcting that.”
Neysa died unexpectedly from pneumonia in 2017 at age 35.
Kerry Fanwick and his wife, Naomi, said they wanted to carry on their daughter’s mission of helping those in need by launching the Neysa Fanwick Memorial Endowment Scholarship through the NASW Foundation. The scholarship celebrates Neysa’s compassion for others by supporting a new generation of social workers.
“Naomi and I spent a lot of time talking with her friends and family members and people who knew and worked with her,” Kerry Fanwick explained. “We went through a lot of ideas. The primary idea that most people came up with is a fund to help educate future social workers in order to carry on the work that Neysa was doing.”
The endowment will help support the education of MSW students who have demonstrated that they are taking action to help historically marginalized populations. Potential candidates will have worked in mental health fields helping to solve critical, emerging social and health problems with creative solutions.
Neysa grew up in Palo Alto, Calif. Her quest to see and experience the world took her to Israel, Southeast Asia and northern India. While her undergraduate degree was in sociology, she spent a year teaching English in Thailand. Then she traveled in Indonesia and Cambodia. Pictured at right: Social worker Neysa Fanwick poses by the mountains in Dharamshala, India. She was there for six weeks working with a Tibetan group that trained Tibetan refugees to be nurses.
The more Neysa investigated social work, the more she realized the extent to which she could make an impact, her father said. “She saw if someone had a problem and they didn’t know how to deal with the issue, that she could be a part of helping them overcome that problem and have a direct impact.”
Neysa earned her MSW from Tulane University in New Orleans. She decided to stay in the area and worked at the NO/AIDS Taskforce in the city, helping people who were HIV/AIDS positive and transitioning from jail back into society.
Those who worked with Neysa called her a natural leader. Her colleagues said she was known as an “angel,” helping those at risk.
“When given the opportunity, she wanted to be the one that NO/AIDS could help on their path and to make them feel better about themselves,” said Mr. Fanwick.
“She was interested in making people aware of the inadequacy of laws and how they were inherently discriminatory of certain people and not giving people a fair shake,” Naomi Fanwick said. In addition to her work, Neysa volunteered her time to help foster dogs and to help with Girls Inc., an organization aligned with her values and with her commitment to empower young women.
Neysa also completed her certification to become an official volunteer with the Orleans Parish Police Department Mobile Crisis Unit Team.
One of the areas where Neysa saw a need for improvement was in management and leadership. In fact, she often sought insight into effective management from her father.
Kerri Criswell, senior manager of fund development for the NASW Foundation, said recipients of the Neysa Fanwick Memorial Endowment Scholarship will be supported to participate in the newly developed leadership academy set to launch in the next year.
Neysa also was interested in broadening how social work can help people on a macro level.
“Neysa wanted to see the impact of her work, but she also realized in doing that it was going to only impact the people she worked with,” her father explained. “We had talks about it—that if you got into policy and stuff like that, you can have a bigger impact.”
When asked how the Neysa Fanwick Memorial Endowment Scholarship may make a difference in the decades to come, Mr. Fanwick said he hoped it will accomplish two goals: One, to help people who want to aid others get their training; and the other would be to encourage and build better leaders so that policies can be developed to help individuals, families and communities on a broader level.
Learn more at NASWFoundation.org