Physical Therapy Students Give Back During Global PT Day of Service

By Caitlin Burns | October 17, 2017

Doctor of Physical Therapy students worked to beautify Wissahickon Park by picking up trash and clearing debris along the walking and hiking trails during the Global PT Day of Service on Oct. 14.

This is the first year that DPT students participated in this international event, which has brought together 8,000 volunteers from more than 40 countries in two years. Vanessa Rappold ’19, Arcadia’s student ambassador for the Pennsylvania Physical Therapy Association, said the students decided to volunteer at Wissahickon Park because it is somewhere that many of them visit for recreation or other volunteer work.

“We have a very service-oriented group of students in our program,” said Rappold. “We have a group who coaches at The Outreach Program for Soccer [and] others who volunteer with Girls on the Run, a program that works to encourage pre-teen girls to develop self-respect and a healthy lifestyles through interactive lessons and running games. As graduate students, we like to do volunteer work to pull ourselves out of our textbooks, give back to the community, come together, and learn. We gain almost as much as we give with these experiences.”