Changing Attitudes: Empowering People with Disabilities.

Changing Attitudes: Empowering People with Disabilities

Context: Poverty and Disability

Poor people with disabilities are especially vulnerable because of the ways that poverty and disability interact. Both poverty and disability are characterized by exclusion from community and society and from different sectors, such as health, education and employment. When someone is disabled and poor, they suffer these exclusions doubly.

Attitudes towards people with disabilities vary in different UPPR communities. Some communities exhibit negative ideas and stigma towards people with disabilities, who may as a result be unwilling to leave their houses or participate in community life. In other places, however, communities are supportive and make an effort for people with disabilities. Disability is frequently an issue raised in Community Action Plans (CAP) as one of the priority issues to be addressed with UPPR work.

Working with Poor People with Disabilities

Across the 23 towns of the UPPR program, people with disabilities are being supported through diverse interventions. These are happening across a range of sectors, and there has been particular emphasis on support through assistive devices, and education. Work has also included providing health services, skill development, enabling access to government services and, in Chittagong, working directly with a blind settlement.

UPPR has supplied assistive devices – such as such as wheelchairs, crutches, white canes, hearing aids, and more – in nine different towns. In some cases, people who had not left their houses for years were able to come out and take part in the life of the community.

Education is a particularly vital area for intervention. Poor children with disabilities often do not receive any education at all, or drop out of school early. To address these issues, and to encourage the self-development of children with disabilities, UPPR has supported children to go to schools for the disabled in seven towns.

A particularly fruitful intervention has been a pre-primary school established in Narayanganj for children with disabilities. Established jointly between UPPR CDC Cluster and a local organization run for and by people with disabilities, the school was originally for 20-25 children, but based on its success, there are now three schools supporting nearly 60 children. As well as linking children with government services, these schools have been vital in changing community attitudes towards children with disabilities.

In addition, UPPR has made a number of other interventions for people with disabilities. There have also been eye camps, working with cataract operations to restore sight. Three towns have implemented work on skill development and training for people with disabilities, and across UPPR programmes small business grants have been given to people with disabilities in order to help them establish micro-enterprises. In Chittagong, where UPPR is working directly with a blind settlement, activities included settlement improvement – such as building latrines, a tube-well, footpaths and drains – and socio-economic work such as grants for small business creation and education support.

 Strategising work with disability and inclusive poverty reduction

Following initial work with people with disabilities, UPPR identified the need to directly address disability within the project. Experience in UPPR and other programs has shown that not focusing on people with disabilities often leads to them being left out of work that is targeted at the poor. In addition to difficulties in targeting beneficiaries, ensuring the participation of people with disabilities isn’t easy – they themselves may be reluctant to come forward, and there might also be resistance from families and communities.

UPPR has developed a strategy to fully address these concerns and to “mainstream” people with disabilities within the program. Mainstreaming means working towards the inclusion of people with disabilities at each level of work. Two particular concerns are developing community mobilization that is inclusive of people with disabilities and of developing targeting, especially for socio-economic grants that includes this vulnerable part of the population. In three towns, UPPR is piloting action groups on disability as a means to ensure their active inclusion in the project.

The goals of mainstreaming are both to improve the work done with this part of the population, and also to better achieve UPPR's mission of reaching the most vulnerable. Improving work with people with disabilities means working towards their empowerment and encouraging their participation not only in UPPR but also in society more generally. Integrating people with disabilities within UPPR's poverty reduction efforts creates an inclusive model of urban poverty reduction that encompasses the most marginalized groups among the poor.