HAOT- Haiti Association of Occupational Therapy

I could write 2 blogs for this but am going to condense it into 1 as we have met 2x since I have blogged last. I am going to start by answering some questions that you might have as you read this...

WHAT IS HAOT?
HAOT is the National Haiti Association for Occupational Therapy that I am helping start in Haiti

WHY ARE YOU STARTING IT?
The best way to answer this questions is to flashback to a blog I wrote in May...

First I have to start with a little back story Janet O'Flynn from NY contacted me a few weeks ago as she & some of her colleagues & friends were working to start the first ever 4 year OT and PT bachelor programs in Haiti. She got my name from a few people that had met me in Haiti and actually had gotten my name from my student Allyson as well. a few weeks before the conference in Nashville I was able to have a long phone conversation with her about their plans about this GREAT program. Well we had set up to meet on Saturday of the conference. On Saturday I had the wonderful opportunity to not only meet Janet but some of the other team members as well as the delegate for Columbia for the World Federation of Occupational Therapy.

During our conversation we realized that in order for the therapy school that will be opening this fall in Haiti to be recognized & accredited through the WFOT the country of Haiti had to have a National OT Society which it currently does not have. An OT living in Haiti is recommended to start the program. Since there are only 3 OTs living in Haiti (and I just learned about the other 2 from the WFOT) I was elected to start the national OT society. I have till March 2016 to write a constitution (i can request constitutions from other countries to assist in writing it). In March the constitution will be taken to Columbia to the next regional WFOT 

So starting the society is my small part in getting a bachelors program that has their accretidation through WFOT (The World Federation of Occupational Therapy).

WHAT DOES START UP INVOLVE...LOOK LIKE

Some of the starting things include:
1. Writing a constitution and By-Laws that will then have to go before all the countries in our region at the next regional meeting in March.
2. Locating OTs and people who would like to be apart of the society
3. Electing Officers
4. Starting a bank account
5. Creating an intake form

WHERE ARE YOU IN THE PROCESS?
First I would not have gotten anywhere in this process if it were not for the WFOT help and if Trinidad and Tobago in Africa had not given us right to use their constitution (TTOTA- Trinidad and Tobago Occupational Therapy Association) as an outline/model for what ours needs to look like. Over the last 4 months I have worked on writing the constitution and By-Laws rough draft. Janet O'Flynn has been very gracious to proof read it.

Once we had a good rough draft we had our first face to face meeting in PAP, Haiti in September along with others interested in helping and be apart. The following is my Facebook post from that day....

"This afternoon we had the first face to face meeting to discuss the starting of the National OT society. We all had a chance to share our passion of moving forward in creating the association and spreading OT awareness across Haiti as well as creating education opportunities in Haiti. I presented the rough draft to the constitution and we will re-convene in a few weeks to make changes before submitting it to the WFOT (World Federation Of Occupational Therapy). Please keep us all in your prayers for wisdom as we move forward with this HUGE project, favor with those we need to help us with getting the association recognized by the government, etc.

A big shout out and thank you to Nahum and Nicholson who volunteered their Saturday afternoon to participate in the first meeting and make sure their were no translation problems. They also brought good questions that facilitated the conversation"

Everyone who was at the Meeting

We had a sign in sheet

Good conversations happened

So thankful my guys were able to be there and be apart of this important day

YAY for OTs
Me, Janet, Diana

I took what we discussed at the first meeting and made some updates to the constitution and By-Laws. We had a second meeting at the beginning of October. During this meeting we read the entire constitution out loud and made corrections as needed. Prior to this meeting 4 OTs read over the constitution and added their thoughts and comments via email. At this meeting we voted to accept this constitution as our best draft that would be sent off to WFOT!

Just yesterday I sent the final draft of the Constitution off to WFOT. We are waiting to hear back from them :-)

WHAT'S NEXT...

November 21st we are having out first official HAOT meeting and will be electing Officers, Executive Committee, The Delegate for Haiti and a 1st Alternate Delegate. Please be praying for this meeting and for wisdom in electing officers.