World Federation of Occupational Therapy Congress in 2010 will be held in Chile!
The 2006 Congress
The congress was held in Australia and OOFRAS was delighted to have the opportunity to offer the chance of a lilfetime to an OOFRAS OT from a developing economy - registration, air and accommodation to the WFOT World Congress! OTs across Australia saw the opportunity to invest strategicly and open doors to another country and forge partnerships that develop OT and refugee practice.
The inaugural OOFRAS World Congress Scholarship was awarded to Tako Tavartkiladze, an OT currently working with refugees in Georgia. Tako qualified as a psychologist before becomming one of the first batch of occupational therapists in the country. She currently works with at a refugee council, university and founded the Georgian OT Association. We have much to learn and much to gain from partnering together.
Introducing Tako
My name is Tako Tavartkiladze, I am Georgian occupational therapist. I have the possibility to exchange a few words through this wonderful professional network, and I would like to announce that OOFRAS provided me with the great opportunity to attend the WFOT Congress this year in Sydney. This participation means a lot for me and for my country; the most important thing is that I have chance to meet OTs - especially those who work with refugees internationally so I can transfer this knowledge and experience to my collegues, partners and clients.
This participation will enable me to share experiences, ideas, reflections for the future practice and research. It may be the case that for some of you it seems quite strange, considering the very young history of professional development of occupational therapy in Georgia (since 2001), that we are involved with the nontraditional OT area with refugees and internally displaced people (IDP) living in Georgia. But social context often directs and shapes our practice and we have to address needs of society.
My teacher and collegue Frank Kronenberg, began teaching for European Network of Occupational Therapy Higher Education (ENOTHE) in Georgia in 2003. He inspired our group of OT students by bringing his experience with street children (a project in Mexico). This is how I started with IDPs during my filedwork education for that module.
At the moment I am involved in fieldwork with the Norwegian Refugee Council with the IDPs in collective living camps in Georgia. Project title is “Empowering community at the IDP collective living camps in Gori”.
I invite all of you, who are interesting in this area to be part of this network; to grasp the chance and communicate at the Congress and use this possibility to support each other!
Tako reflects on scholarship opportunity a year later... her learning experience continues!
The scholarship helped both me and my foreign colleagues to enrich our knowledge and experience with the refugees. I had opportunity to share my work and Georgian example of the good practice with the target group, which gave us the floor to discuss further and deepen the subject. In addition this information sharing I could participate in the Congress and meet different professionals in various areas. The resources have been obtained by means of different literature, networking, future collaboration etc. back in the country I had a wonderful opportunity to share this with my colleagues and students. Later on I used a lot of information and experience in preparing the education module for first grade students at University on “occupational science and community based strategies in occupational therapy”.
In October 2006 I was invited in Ankara, Turkey as a guest teacher at the Intensive Course – European perspective on social inclusion of persons with disabilities (implemented by ENOTHE), where students were provided with the example of the OT practice with IDPs in Georgia, in order to enhance their knowledge in this specific area and to provide understanding what are the top concerns people living in deprived conditions and what OT can offer them. The intention of the session is to provide the understanding and the later application of the professional strategies in building the partnership with the potential partners in the field including: government units, international or local nongovernmental organizations, and target group/communities.
This can be looked as one of the outcomes of the scholarship and also a future strategy of how to promote OT with deprived communities through education.
It is our hope to raise sufficient funds to offer the scholarship again in 2010. Tako is still benefiting from the invaluable experience - and OOFRAS would like to provide this opportunity again! Please contact us to contribute to this fund.
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