Dr. Venkat Rao Pulla

• President Brisbane Institute of Strengths based Practice
• Vice President, Australian Association of Social Workers
• Convenor, International Social Work Interest Group, Australian Association of Social Workers, Queensland
• Director, International Strengths based Strategies Conference, 2006, Hyderabad, India
• President, Coping and Resilience, Dubrovnik 2009 – An International Congress on Trauma recovery, peace and hope building.
• Secretary, SWARA, Sunshine Welfare and Rehabilitation Association, Brisbane.

Dr. Venkat Pulla has been practicing social work for the last three decades. A Graduate of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Community Development, with his practice he has taken social work into varied situations. Along with a number of his colleagues his work in Strengths-Based Practices (SbPs) concentrates on the inherent strengths of individuals, families groups and organisations deploying peoples' personal strengths to aid their recovery
and their empowerment. SbPs are empowering alternatives to traditional methods with individuals, group or organizational work. SbPs refrain from allowing crippling, labelling and stigmatized language. Descriptions and pathology owned by persons groups and organizations that suggest acceptance of their condition as hopeless or helpless to change are constructively challenged through SbPs. Strengths based strategies build and foster hope from within by focusing and working with precedent successes. SbPs strategies facilitate change by assisting to look at / what has worked? What does not work? and what might work presently making it important for facilitators and those desiring change to be integral to this process of change.

Dr. Venkat Pulla is an accredited Senior Practitioner of Social Work well recognised in Australia and overseas as a highly committed trainer of human values and strengths based social work practice frameworks for empowerment of clients and staff within the teams. To Venkat there is only one perspective of human rights: ‘that no one is ever abused, harmed and ever violated’. The understanding that Venkat imparts into development processes is his ‘intentional perspectives approach’ (IPA) that focuses on ensuring survival -first; growth and development of pervasive consciousness -second. IPA
allows his facilitation and his and co-learners to dream and work pragmatically towards ensuring full development of potential without compromising. Venkat sees a great majority of people innocently, ignorantly or purposively leading veiled lives. Their darkness produces abuse, neglect and want,
discrimination and even situations of under privileging of others. Venkat’s tactical conversations cause gentle nudges for such slumbering humanity without sounding provocative. ‘If they are not awake they are not aware’

Dr. Venkat Pulla spent some 14 years preparing social work graduates and a couple of years in capacity development of public sector management through DFID Projects in Metros India. In India he received a Fellowship of the Ashoka International Foundation in Washington and received other concurrent supports to become an international travelling activist/ lecturer for two years covering countries such as Germany, Netherlands, UK, Thailand, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, India and the USA, presenting and researching the inextricable relationships between development, welfare and ecology. In 1992 he moved from India to Australia as the foundation Head of Social Work at the Northern Territory University, Darwin, Australia for four years. Since 1996 Dr Venkat Pulla worked extensively with refugees and migrants being the Case Coordinator of Brisbane Migrant Resource Centre. Later, he moved to Queensland’s Department of Families to do Child Protection work and did various stints starting from Family Services Officer, Team Leader, Senior Practitioner and Senior Quality Assurance Officer under the newly constituted Child Safety. Within the Disability Services he holds a Social Work position.

Dr Venkat Pulla has extensive clinical experience across a wide range of client settings. Dr Venkat Pulla has founded the Brisbane Institute of Strengths Based Practicei which innovates and advances a variety of training methodologies that actively interact and manage change. He is currently the Vice
President of the Australian Association of Social Workers and is a member of the accreditation panel for schools of social work in Australia. The Brisbane Institute of Strengths based Practice (Inc) propagates, supports and encourages strengths based human resource development and management consulting, counselling, group and community training activities and projects in the Asia pacific region and elsewhere, through studies, visits, conferences and workshops and major training events. Its purpose is to promote individual and community development through the practice and promotion of various skills including:

• Asset-based community development
• Appreciative Enquiry
• Strengths-based strategies
• Strengths-focused therapies

Current and future initiatives of Brisbane Institute of Strengths based Practice include: Sri Lanka- Capacity development initiatives for School of Social Work; Strengths based practice for ethno conflict resolution; East- Timor Liste-‘assisting people to look within’; Australia- aboriginal and Torres Strait
initiatives of ‘sharing the road of development’, and healing from centre initiatives; and Vietnam-‘Sansara human values in development’ initiatives.
None of the initiatives by the Brisbane Institute involve raising of huge monies or building infrastructures. It is important to know that these empowerment strategies and actions are initiated without a penny. ‘By default, strengths based practices rekindle and rejuvenate the spirit of self reliance in individuals, groups, communities, and nation states that will answer all questions at all times’. Dr Venkat Pulla constantly evolves his strengths based practices and according to him ‘Intentional skill identification and building a culture of sharing and positive volunteering guides the Brisbane Institute of Strengths based Practice’, which is his brain child. Dr Venkat Pulla goes on to add, ‘that small monies are required in all change work in society. But it is the nature of strengths based practice that drives and combines positively pervasive imagination and hard work’. This potent lead produces major and lasting outcomes to meet the ever growing needs of humanity, each day.

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