American OT and Her Students Visit Cairo...

Two years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Cindy Hahn, OTR/L at the World Mental Health Organization Congress held in Cairo, September 2005. Cindy lectured at the conference on "The Role of OT in Mental Health."

Since meeting in Cairo, we have corresponded for the past two years, as she was planning a second trip with some of her OT students from A.T. Still University, Arizona School of Health Sciences (www.atsu.edu/ashs).

Pictured below: Maha Helali, Managing Director of the LRC, Cindy Hahn, OTR/L, Laura Efinger, Head of OT Department at the LRC, Vanessa McCarthy, OTS, Gina Buban, OTS, and Rachel Hoppe, OTS.

This past summer Cindy and three of her OT students (Gina Buban, Vanessa McCarthy, and Rachel Hoppe) visited Cairo for one week in August. Cindy and the students visited Abbassiya Hospital, Behman Hospital, the ADVANCE School and the Learning Resource Center in Cairo.

Cindy and her students raised money to donate OT supplies, some of which were donated to the ADVANCE School and the LRC. The students were very innovative and were able to negotiate with S & S Worldwide (http://www.ssww.com/), a distributor of arts and crafts supplies and educational supplies, to match the students monetary donations with OT related supplies. The children will greatly benefit from these supplies, so we can not thank Cindy, Gina, Vanessa and Rachel, as well as, their classmates enough for all their hard work.


Pictured below: Gina, Rachel, Vanessa, Cindy & Mr. Bahaa Farag, Administrative Director for the ADVANCE Center.


Although the ADVANCE School and the LRC were closed when the students visited, they were able to tour the facilities. Since the OT students were out of school in August, it was a prime time for them to visit. Hopefully the next visit will occur when students are attending their full programs at the facilities and the OT students can observe and assist in some OT related services. It would be our pleasure to have more OT students visit our facilities. It is a wonderful experience for students to experience OT in developing countries.


Cindy and her students have been quite busy since they returned back to Arizona, but once they are settled I am sure they will share with us their impressions of their visit to Cairo this past summer.

Cindy and her students will be presenting at the Arizona Occupational Therapy Association Annual State Conference (http://www.arizota.org/) this weekend regarding the topic "Bringing Occupational Therapy to Egypt." They will present at the conference about their experience in Cairo. I am sure this presentation will bring more awareness of the need for developing programs for individuals with special needs in Egypt, as well as, attracting more OT's to work in the region.

Much thanks,

Laura