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AOTA 2015 in Nashville! Yee-hawww! ⟩
May 11, 2015, by Jonathan

Getting Involved Videos What are OS/OT?

Howdy!

This post is about my recent trip to Nashville, Tennessee for this year’s AOTA conference! First off, I have to give a big thanks to the division for making this trip possible for me, as I was fortunately awarded a scholarship to attend the conference. This was a huge help, especially since I probably spent half of this amount on some bah-beh-cue dry ribs alone. Haha totally kidding, but jokes aside, having the opportunity to attend this year’s conference really brings my entire gradschool experience full circle. Exactly two years ago, I had the opportunity to attend the AOTA national conference right before I started the program, in which I volunteered. For any individuals who are hoping to gain a conference experience, I highly recommend volunteering, even if you are not yet a practitioner or a student! Typically if you volunteer, you get to attend the conference for free, as was the case for me two years ago. I remember going two years ago, just being admitted to the program, with excitement of what was to come. I remember running into Ricky and Rob, two former ambassadors, and little did I know that I’d be filling their shoes two years later. With that said, as Leila mentioned in a previous post, this year’s conference was the largest ever! It was a pleasure getting to attend several educational sessions, meeting other practitioners and fellow students, and just enjoying the OT pride that was definitely palpable in the atmosphere!

This year’s theme was “giving voice to the distinct value of occupational therapy.” Personally for me, this means being able to articulate, advocate, and express the unique skillset occupational therapists can provide to help all people, in utilizing occupation to help everyone we serve reach their fullest potential. Whether that’s helping a Grandfather who’s recovering from stroke gain the upper extremity strength to hold his baby granddaughter, helping a Mother who’s battling cancer find meaningful occupations while she receives treatment, helping a child with special needs gain the skillset they need to access their school curriculum, or helping a veteran with PTSD foster therapeutic relationships within the community through surfing, our value is diverse, essential, and most definitely distinct. This was actually one of my favorite things about the conference; the fact that I was able to attend several educational sessions and poster board presentations that demonstrated how occupational therapy is evolving on a daily basis, and just how occupational therapist are utilizing their unique skill sets to help people of all backgrounds. One of the practitioners I had met was formulating an occupation based program for refugees from other countries, who have a long history of oppression, abuse, or trauma. A fellow student I had met had implemented a creative arts and crafts program at a local women’s penitentiary, which I really identified with especially given my experiences at Project 180. Several relatively new professionals spoke about their transition from student to working clinician, and it was great to gain their insight about their challenges and their keys to success.

All in all, AOTA 2015 was an amazing experience that gave me greater insight about my profession, and where it is headed towards the future. Needless to say, It’s an exciting time to be in the profession and to see what my fellow colleagues have been working on to help our profession grow and evolve. In addition, Nashville was an amazing city as well and it was tons of fun checking out the city with my classmates and several new friends in our spare time. I can definitely say that I have never in my life heard so many country covers of ’90s hip and R&B songs. Here’s a video documenting some my AOTA 2015 experience.

Y’all take care now,

Jonathan

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35th Annual Swim with Mike! ⟩
April 28, 2015, by Jonathan

Getting Involved Videos

Hello everyone! Hope you’re all doing great! Over here at the division we are wrapping up OT month and it’s been an absolute blast so far! This blog post is actually dedicated to one of the events of OT month that my classmates and I had the privilege of participating in, the 35th annual Swim with Mike Swim-a-thon! As the Occupational Therapy and Science Council Philanthropy Chair, it was my second year coordinating a USC OT team to participate, and I have to give a shout out to my friend Ali Adams for helping me coordinate USC OT’s involvement over the last two years. For those of you that don’t know, Swim with Mike is an annual swim-a-thon that is held to raise money for the Physically Challenged Athletes Scholarship Fund. The fund was first started through the generosity of three time All-American Swimmer Mike Nyeholt. In January 1981, Mike was in a Motorcycle accident that resulted in paralysis from the chest down. As a gesture to show support for Mike, his family and friends started a swim-a-thon fundraiser to help Mike purchase a specially equipped van that he could utilize. On the day of the swim-a-thon, Mike surprised his supporters by joining them in the pool, straight from the hospital! More than $58,000 was raised that day, which far surpassed the donation needed for the van. As a result, Mike used the excess funds to start the Physically Challenged Athletes Scholarship Fund at the University of Southern California. The aim of the Physically Challenged Athletes Scholarship Fund is to raise money for student athletes who have sustained a life-altering injury. Through the generosity of the Swim with Mike supporters, the donations are utilized to help student athletes with disabilities pursue higher education.

35 years later, Swim with Mike has raised over 15 million dollars, has 61 current scholarship recipients, has granted 178 total scholarships, reaching students from over 85 different universities. Swim with Mike is a fun aquatic festival that brings people together to swim, dive, and most of all, have fun for a great cause. Last year, I had the privilege of participating in a 34 hour swim-a-thon with participation from 40 fellow OT students who made up our team! I covered the night shift from 2 am to 7 am with my good friend Anna Redfern, and best believe I got supah pruny. This year, Swim with Mike was different in that it conducted its first ever triathlon.  Inspired to answer the question “what is your 35,” participants donated 35 dollars to participate in a 35 minute bike, 35 minute swim, and 35 minute run to support the Physically Challenged Athletes Scholarship fund. We had 20 OT students represent our team this year, and we all had a really fun time supporting a great cause. If you’d like to support the Swim with Mike Scholarship fund please visit swimwithmike.org.

Here’s a picture of some of our team this year, but I am currently making a video that I will be posting shortly. Here’s a video of my awesome team and I enjoying our SWM experience. Enjoy!

Please stay tuned for my next blog, in which I’ll be writing about the AOTA conference. In the meantime, Leila has written a blog about the conference as well, check it out, it’s a good read! 😎

Until next time my friends,
— Jon

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AOTA 2015! ⟩
April 22, 2015, by Leila

Getting Involved Videos

Hey ya’ll!

I just attended my first AOTA Annual Conference & Expo in Nashville, Tennessee and it was an amazing experience! For those of you that do not know, the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) is our national professional association that represents the interests and concerns of occupational therapy practitioners and students of occupational therapy and to improve the quality of occupational therapy services. A conference and expo is held at different locations around the US each year. This year it was held in Nashville, Tennessee and it was also the largest conference ever with over 9,000 attendees! I have to say, AOTA’s annual conference is the most exciting and dynamic gathering for occupational therapy professionals each year and it is so inspiring to be around so many occupational therapy practitioners, students and leaders! In addition, I was fortunate enough to be selected to present a poster with a couple of my colleagues on a project we worked on last fall semester!

AOTA’s itinerary is filled with an inspiring Presidential and keynote addresses, over 900 educational sessions and an Expo filled with the latest products and opportunities! For more information on our national association check out the AOTA website.

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Leadership Capstone Project Part 2: PhilaPinas Drive ⟩
April 21, 2015, by Jonathan

Externships International Videos

Hello everyone! Hope you’re all doing great! OT Month is in full effect over here at the division, and best believe you can catch me walking down the hallway sporting one of our signature OT Month pins! In addition, I just got back from an awesome experience at AOTA, which I will be writing about more later in a future upcoming blog. Today’s blog is about the second part of my leadership project, in which I had the opportunity to carry out a philanthropic project I had curated in preparation for the leadership capstone experience, which I named PhilaPinas. In the beginning stages of preparing for this project, my initial goal was to raise $250 of funds to be utilized in purchasing slippers to be distributed to children walking barefoot in the rural provinces. However, through the amazing generosity of my family, friends, and classmates, we were able to collectively raise $1700 dollars of funds. Given this monumental donation, this evolved and expanded the project to reach several different sites in which we could extend our positive impact. In addition, I had no idea just how far this money would take us, as the dollar goes such a long way in the Philippines. Just to give you some perspective, I was able to purchase 100 slippers for only $33! Thus, you can only imagine how far $1700 dollars of raised funds would take us. In each site, we had the opportunity to meet the coordinators of these respective sites, meet the people who found refuge in these safe-havens, and assess what these places needed the most in terms of donated supplies. The donations consisted of various necessities and supplies, including baby soap, baby shampoo, milk, crackers, detergent, clothes, slippers, toothpaste, and much more!

The first site we had the pleasure of visiting was the Hospicio de San Jose Orphanage and Elderly home. This home provides refuge for all types of individuals, including pregnant mothers who are homeless, children with special needs, women who have been domestically or sexually abused, orphaned children, and homeless elderly. Their motto is “welcoming all people, from womb to the tomb.” Over 200 people call Hospicio de San Jose home, who have opened their doors to help underserved communities dating all the way back to 1810. To my pleasant surprise, Hospicio de San Jose even had an occupational therapy department! I had the opportunity to meet with their team members, and hear about their inspiring mission of helping all people who enter Hospicio De San Jose’s doors.

The second place we visited was St. Rita’s orphanage and school, which is the elementary school my Mom once attended! St. Rita’s provides care to orphans and children who have special needs. The children at this site had a real enduring nature about them, and were an absolute joy to be around.

Next on our list was Philippines General Oncology Ward. I had the opportunity to hang out with these resilient kids, a lot of whom spent their time doing art while receiving chemotherapy. Thus, to support them in this occupation, we provided various art supplies in addition to food.

Following this visit, we had an opportunity to check out Bahay Ni Maria, a home for grandmothers who have been abandoned. These women had a lot of wisdom to share with me about life, resiliency through struggle, and God’s providence. I learned a ton from them and the light that they shared.

Next, we visited the College of Perpetual Help, where my Aunt is the dean at the college of health sciences (which includes an occupational therapy department!) She mentioned to me that they do an outreach program at National Belibid Prison, in which they send teachers to educate the inmates. We decided to visit and donate at National Belibid Prison, and learned more about their program. They incorporate a true “rehabilitation through education model” and they are only 1 of 2 schools in the world that offer an opportunity for their well-behaved inmates to attain a bachelor’s degree in Entrepreneurship while still serving their sentence. My aunt was telling me about what the graduates of the program have gone on to do, and how the program has decreased recidivism rates. The model that I saw here was truly inspiring, and I believe their rehabilitation through education model serves as a successful platform that other institutions can take after.

In our last couple of days, we had an opportunity to distribute slippers in the Lagunas, Pasay, and Manila rural areas. At first I was a little weary as to whether or not we would be able to distribute all these supplies, but I quickly found out just how many kids walk the streets barefoot. The gratitude expressed was truly heart felt, and the smiles on their faces were priceless. Our last stop was at San Roque Parish, a church that does outreach to a community in which 70 families had lost their homes to a fire. The sisters at this church emphasized just how far our donations would go in helping these families.

When I look back at the leadership capstone experience as a whole, all I can say is that it was truly a life changing experience that helped me grow in many ways. I’ve never felt more connected to my culture and roots, and to be able to give back at this capacity was truly a dream come true. I would like to thank my family, friends, and classmates for their generosity, and letting me be an agent of sharing their positive impact. Yes, there’s no doubt that there’s still a lot of work in the Philippines to be done; there is corruption, war, and a tremendous amount of people living in poverty. With that said, the most refreshing aspect of this experience was to witness the generosity, gratitude, and resilient nature of the Filipino people, despite the daily struggles they face. This is definitely not the last time I will be carrying out the PhilaPinas project, but I have to give big props to all the people who made this possible, and to our program for affording me the opportunity to carry out this dream. 😊

Here’s a video capturing the leadership capstone experience and some pictures documenting the PhilaPinas drive. Enjoy! 😊

Until next time,
Jonathan Rodil

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¡Pura Vida! ⟩
April 13, 2015, by Leila

Externships International Videos

First off, I apologize for the lack of blog posts from me the last couple of weeks. I have been quite the busy bee with school and life ☺. Before I go on talk about the current events going on during this time of year, I want to tell you about the amazing externship opportunity I had in Costa Rica! As mentioned in impervious posts, during our final spring semester of the Master’s program we are provided the opportunity to learn and apply aspects of leadership and advocacy within a setting/site of our choice. We create the externship opportunity for ourselves and have the flexibility to decide what would provide us the most optimal learning experience. The externship experience will vary from person to person — some students decide to stay local and others decide to travel abroad. Some of my fellow classmates and student ambassadors traveled to South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, China and Ireland.

Myself, along with six other OT students were placed in a government funded daycare center in an under served community in San Jose, Costa Rica. It was unfortunate to see the center under staff and lack sufficient resources. The children there lacked the adequate educational resources they need to further develop their personal and academic selves. Nevertheless, the children were extremely sweet and excited to have us there! Our mission was to provide these children with support, interaction, compassion and care. We played games, participated in circle time, sang songs and created arts and crafts! It was heartbreaking to walk in some days, because the children really could have benefited from occupational therapy services for fine or gross motor as well as social play as Kristy (student ambassador) mentioned in her blog. Being at the daycare center was quite eye-opening, not only because of the underdeveloped, under-funded learning environment that these children were in, but the permanent smiles they shared with us despite this. It was an amazing externship experience and I would love to go back and help.

Although we were primarily in Costa Rica for our externship, we did have some time to explore and experience the Costa Rican culture. During our time, we stayed with a Costa Rican family. It was a great way to immerse ourselves in the local culture and experience the Tica (Costa Rican) way of life, practice our Spanish, indulge in traditional Tica cuisine and have a family away from home. We also got to explore the city, try zip-lining, visit the hot springs, see volcanos, hike Manual Antonio National Park, and of course, relax at the beach! Overall, I had an amazing time with a great group of friends and I feel so fortunate to have had this experience as an occupational therapy student at USC. Not only does USC’s program develop you to become and amazing OT, but also as future leader in the field! Whether you complete an international externship or not, it is what you make of the opportunity to help foster you to become the person you would like to be and live life to the fullest. With that said, there is a saying I learned in Costa Rica that I would like to continue to live by — Pura Vida. It is basically the national slogan of Costa Rica and was one of my favorite sayings there. It’s a phrase that literally means “pure life”. But in reality it’s a way of life. It’s all about taking things easy and enjoying life. I understand the hustle and bustle of the daily grind can sometimes get in the way of living life. Coming back from Costa Rica, has provided me with yet another reason to appreciate life and the meaning that my favorite occupations have for me. So, even when things get tough, take some time every day, week or month to engage in your favorite occupations. 😀

¡Pura Vida!

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