Recap of methods used during a workshop by French OT students
On Sunday March, 18th I took part in a workshop with 16 others French OT students, to learn and start to develop an awareness project about difference. This was one of the many workshops who happened during the 12th WEF of UNAEE, a training meeting of 2 days for OT students, who takes place every year in one of the 24 OT Schools in France.
This workshop was held by Marie, UNAEE’s board member, William, president of Sibsters, and Camille who’s also from Sibsters. If you don’t know UNAEE yet, you can have a look at this former article on the blog.
About Sibsters, it’s a young French association, created by William and a friend of his 2 years ago. Sibsters aims to promote and inform about differences, as today many people are left out of society because of their disabilities, origins, sexual orientation, gender, appearance, etc. Thus Sibsters organises events and uses the hashtag #LaDifferenceInspire that means #DifferenceInspires to promote and communicate about difference.
In this article, I’m going to recap methods we used and ideas we had during this workshop, hopefully it will inspire you to develop projects!

William, with the help of others OT students, identified a specific theme which was LSF, French Sign Language. The main goal of our projects was to raise awareness about French Sign Language and the need of having basis about it, to foster inclusion of hearing-impaired and deaf population in society.
Choose a theme you care about, identify a need in society. As OT students you are aware of inclusion issues curtain population face of in society, then you can help their voice to be heard.

William, Marie and Camille then suggested 3 types of projects to us: a video, a happening and an event. My team and I choose video! You can do whatever you want: a flyer, a congress, a pop-up in shopping centre, a humanitarian mission, etc. Be creative!

Third step… go for it!
Here’s the method we used to pilot our project development: the Five W’s. These are questions whose answers are considered basic in problem solving.
- WHO?
- Who’s involved or will be involved in?
- Who’s the project lead?
- Who does our project target?
- Who’s going to implement the project?
- WHAT?
- What do we aim?
- What do we need to develop and implement our project?
- Which means will we use to reach our goals?
- WHEN?
- When will it happen?
- It’s also about temporal organization of project stages, creating a timeline is helpful.
- WHERE?
- Where will it take place?
- Where the team will meet/communicate?
- Where can we find resources?
- WHY?
- It’s important to wonder WHY before taking any decision!
- Why this option rather than another one?
- And we added a sixth question HOW? to the list.
- How will it happens?
- How are we going to manage each stage?
In just an hour, we managed to have many rich and concrete ideas! When the whole team brings its creativity it’s much simpler than it seems, then just go for it!
Hopefully this article inspire you to use your OT student and personal skills to develop an amazing awareness project, looking forward hearing your feedback and your experiences!
(Posted by Marlies on behalf of author- Maurane)
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