OTD News Volume 5, Issue 1

SOTA Gives Back to the Community Page 6 OTDNews, Volume V, Issue 1 Over the past several months members of Nova Southeastern University (NSU) Tampa’s Student Occupational Therapy Association (SOTA) have been busy helping make a positive change in their community. Volunteering with charity organizations and government agencies, they have used their unique skills as occupational therapy students to help those in need. From helping people be safer in their cars, to ensuring that people can have a healthy meal with a good conversation, and many more. SOTA members demonstrated their commitment to the core values of the profession they love. At the Trinity Café In October several SOTA members volunteered at Trinity Café, a local charity organization that has been providing meals for the last fourteen years to those who are homeless and hungry . Trinity Café’s goal is to not only provide a hot (and truly deli- cious) meal to those in need, but also give them a sense of personhood and belonging. Students helped serve meals as wells as provide engaging conversation that showed the patrons they were not just another face on the street, but a person who mattered. Through this interaction the students sought to make a positive change in the people they served, and were in turn changed them- selves for the better. CarFit Changing things for the better is a common theme in occupational therapy, and the students demonstrated this in a very practical way by participating in several CarFit events. Endorsed by the Florida Department of Transportation and developed by the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) and the American Association for Retired Persons (AARP), CarFit seeks to help older adults fit better in their cars. The goal of a CarFit event is to promote safe driving practices, as well as inform