Our people
Frank Tesoriero
I started life in 1950 in the western suburbs of Sydney before moving
closer the Sydney CBD, where my family joined the rest of its Italian
clan whose members emigrated from two small islands off the south west
coast of Italy. I grew up with four generations and over 200 relatives
in just a few square kilometres.
My sense of family has stayed with me even though the family has long ago disintegrated, partly through the deaths of the older generation members and my generation scattering around Australia and beyond.
In 1973 I graduated from Sydney University with a social work qualification. Although the course was almost entirely casework, this did not shape my future in social work. As soon as we graduated, my wife, myself, our dog and our 1966 Beetle headed for Adelaide, where we have remained. My first job was with the (then) Port Adelaide Central Mission as a community development worker in the Aboriginal Community Development program. Since then, I have developed and maintained a passion for community development. I have worked in community health in Adelaide with different communities, including the Indo Chinese communities. But I have also engaged in community development in as unlikely a setting as a psychiatric hospital. Here, with some chronically ill patients, we established a restaurant, Freuds. It seems my Italian background was more influential than my casework training.
Since 1996 I have been involved in a project in South India. India and her people never fail to inspire me – I am constantly amazed at the contradictions that exist there. The new and the traditional sit side by side. Social change and age-old oppressions co-exist. Nearly 70 of my students have done an international placement in South India and they, too, describe it as life-changing.
The Indian constitution was signed on January 26, 1950; I was born in
Sydney on the same day. Coincidence? I think not.
Frank Tesoriero is senior lecturer and program director of three
programs in the School of Social Work and Social Policy.