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Greetings from the Wenatchee Valley! My name is Amy Jennings, and I am the Membership Chair for WOTA. This is my first year on the executive board and I am still in the process of learning the ins and outs of this position. So far, I’ve enjoyed that it keeps me busy during our current era of social distancing. I definitely think membership is now more important than ever to share resources and support each other through this pandemic. We are stronger together!
Here is some exciting news regarding membership: We currently have 860 members (573 OTRs, 148 OTAs, 121 students, and 18 retired members). This is almost 250 more members than last year at this time! Great job WOTA!
The not-so-great news: There are 5,116 licensed OT practitioners in Washington state. That means only 16% of OTs and OTAs are involved in WOTA. We can do better than that!
I had the privilege of being one of the judges for the student “hackathon” event that was held during conference launch week. The challenge was to develop ideas to increase student involvement in state OT associations. The students came up with a lot of great ideas including mentorship programs, opportunities to shadow practitioners from various settings either in-person or virtually, journal clubs, opportunities to win prizes or scholarships, and developing a robust website full of resources.
The membership committee will be working on putting some of these ideas into action to build a stronger organization with more benefits for all of us. Thank you for supporting WOTA!
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