Hello, I’m Tom Pauwaert from Belgium and I’m in my final year studying OT and got the opportunity to join the FAB program.
So what is the FAB program?
The FAB project is a very unique project because it’s the only joint degree at bachelor level in Europe. It’s a joint program in the last semester of your study as an OT with approximately 20 students in total and 12 teachers from Metropolia University in Finland, FH Campus Wien in Austria and Artevelde University College in Ghent. It consists of 6 modules.
The first one was in Belgium in December, where we went on an urban exploration and got divided into groups of 5 to explore a district in Ghent. In this exploration we talked to a lot of people from different nationalities and asked about their occupation. On Friday every group gave a presentation about their district in a creative way.
With this way of teaching rather than sitting in a classroom and listening to a teacher, we could teach our fellow students about the key concepts like:
-Urbanization & Community Development
-Gentrification & Inclusive design
-Occupational justice
-Transformation through occupation
-Occupation consciousness of the districts.
In February there was a week in Helsinki, Finland.
There, the theme of the week was module 2: “the future of OT by 2030”. There were really broad themes such as technology, internationalization, demographic changes and participation for working life. The brainstorming sessions were about where and what OT’s will do in the future. It was fascinating to see the different perspectives from every group. Each group presented what the emerging roles might be in the future.
After the week in Helsinki all the students are doing an internship abroad for 12 weeks in module 3. In my case, I’m currently doing an internship in neurology in the Donauspital in Vienna. All the students are doing module 4: Health Promotion at the university that is responsible for them during the internship. There we are working in small groups about health prevention and health promotion. During you’re internship you get time to write your bachelor thesis, that’s the 5th module.
In June we will have the final week module 6 of the FAB project in Vienna. Here we will go further into urban exploration, building up on the knowledge we achieved in Belgium.
What was your overall experience of the program?
In my case, this project has been an outstanding experience so far. This cooperation is beneficial for your personal development as an OT but also learning about the cultural differences between the countries and in fields which OT’s work. In little groups during the week you get to know everybody from the FAB project really good and we’re becoming one big family.
This project will grow in the future and I would recommend it! It has shown me that during this week you get motivated by the teamwork. After every week I come home inspired and ready to go further in my development as an OT!
