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3rd Asia Pacific CBR Congress

Empowered Community:
Case of Centre for Disability in Development (CDD) in Bangladesh

A.H.M. Noman Khan
Executive Director, CDD
July 2015

CBR is an evolving strategy since last four decades and striving to create an enabling inclusive environment for collective community empowerment to actively encourage the voice and representation of persons with disabilities in all communities. The current CBR framework matrix emphasizes on establishing an inclusive society where empowerment of the total community along with persons with disabilities. All components and elements of CBR involves advocacy and actions at all concerned stakeholder at national, sub-national and at community level.

About Bangladesh:

Bangladesh is a developing country of South Asia recently considered as a lower middle income country.The country is densely populated one having 152.5 million people in 44000 squire kilometre territory. Poverty is still widespread in the country with 24% of the population living below poverty level. Currently the per capita GDP stands at over US$ 1300 (2013-04). Essential services like health, education, social security, employment scopes are still inadequate particularly in rural Bangladesh where 80% of the population lives. Natural disasters in different forms are regular events for the country that further aggravates the sufferings of the people.

About Centre fir Disability in Development (CDD)

CDD, since last 20 years, are deeply concerned for establishing an inclusive society following the “Community Approaches to Disability in Development” to establish CBR in the context of Bangladesh. These involves enormous interventions at national, Sub-national and community level targeting national policy reformation, capacity building of executing agencies and facilitate systematic activities at community level. The Vision of CDD is establishing equal opportunities and full participation for persons with disabilities in all spheres of life. The Mission is to include disability issues in mainstream development to enable persons with disabilities to obtain equal opportunities and full participation.

CDD believes that all development actors must mainstream disability issues and make their organizational environment and programs disability inclusive. Barriers within society that limit inclusion of persons with disabilities need to be removed. At the same time persons with disabilities must have access to all basic services like health & rehabilitation, education, livelihood, social etc leading to empowering the community to address issue of disability. This will encourage participation of persons with disabilities to have a meaningful and dignified life upholding their rights and privilege. CDD does this by building the capacity of state and non-state development actors to ensure that persons with disabilities are included in development programs. CDD promotes networking and is creating linkages with development organizations, corporate sector and most importantly with the Government of Bangladesh.

In this backdrop, CDD has instigated deliberative citizen engagement in the light of CBR. Self-help Groups of persons with disabilities have been nurtured and supported for their active participation and constructive engagement in community development process so that people’s rights, dignity and diversity are respected and realized. In recent days, CDD has initiated a CBR rollout project in the country following CBR guideline supported by CBM.

Empowered Community in CBR:

The empowerment component focuses on the importance of empowering people with disabilities, their family members and communities to facilitate the mainstreaming of disability across each sector and to ensure that everybody is able to access their rights and entitlements. (Quoted from CBR Guideline.)

Empowerment is interdependent on the systematic implementation and achievement of all other components not only focusing on any individual rather creating the environment with maximum understanding the issues of disability and creating access to all rights and privilege targeting persons with disabilities. This is only possible by systematic involvement and mainstreaming disability in all human development interventions from grassroots to tertiary level.

Factors behind exclusion of persons with disabilities:

Awareness and acceptance: The persons with disabilities are left out of the development process mainly due to lack of awareness of people who design and implement development programs, negative attitude among general population towards persons with disabilities, scarcity of resources and lack of knowledge and skills on how to address needs of persons with disabilities inside development programs.

Persons with disabilities are amongst the most vulnerable of the disadvantaged groups of people in Bangladesh. Most of them receive little or no development assistance. Therapeutic services and availability of assistive devices are also extremely limited.

Lack of rehabilitation services: Limitation of resources restrains many organizations to initiate and expand rehabilitation and other services for persons with disabilities. Government initiatives in this area are also inadequate. Training organizations have inadequate capacity to train and develop rehabilitation workers in the country. Assistive devices are not available at the community level. Due to poverty many of the persons with disabilities cannot afford to travel long distances to reach the service providers and receive their services. Professionals like physiotherapist, occupational-therapists are few in number in the country. Most of them are able to find employment in the big cities. As a result almost none exists at the local level. Principal caregivers mainly mothers and other female members of persons with disabilities lack the very basic skills required in caring their family member(s) who are persons with disabilities.

Persons with disabilities are excluded from mainstream society and deprived of access to development opportunities because of large number of people with disabilities, extensive poverty, 75% people leaving in isolated rural communities, non-existence of disability related services etc,

Barriers created by society: The effect, disability has within a family may differ, but a common phenomenon can be experienced. Parents find it extremely difficult to acknowledge the disability of their child. They are usually looked upon as a burden of the family on understanding one who has no or little prospect and who can never be contributive within the family. The effect this will have on the disabled child is extremely negative. He/she might be neglected and discriminated from other children and members of the family. They may be the last one to receive basic requirements in the family. The family even leaves them out of the development process. The condition of an adult member suddenly becoming disabled is also not that encouraging. He/she may be left out of family affairs. His/her position of importance may decrease; might not be as economically contributive as before, may be too alienated from other members of the family. Social discrimination on people with disability is very common. They are often looked at with over sympathy or neglect. They are left out of social affairs and activities. They are associated with inactivity, divine curse, fear, hatred, etc. which relatively make them invisible in social functions and gatherings.

CDD’s Major Interventions on Disability Inclusion in Development:

  • Health and Rehabilitation: Awareness, identification, assessment, community based therapeutics services, outreach rehab camp services by Ship and mobile van, prosthetics, orthotics and assistive device production and distribution etc,
  • Education: Inclusive Non-formal and formal primary education, development of teaching and learning material, teachers training, advocacy for policy reformation etc.
  • Livelihood and Employment: Skill development, resource mobilization for income generation, advocacy for job placement in corporate and other employment sectors
  • Disaster and Climate Change: Disability inclusive disaster risk reduction pilot practices and influences for disability inclusive policy at different level etc.
  • Rights and Empowerment: Community awareness, formation and capacity building of self-help groups and apex body with persons with disabilities, citizen’s engagement in local government institutions, and policy advocacy at all levels.

Specific Interventions towards an Empowered Community:

CDD is strongly committed to working with persons with disabilities to improve their ability to communicate and engage with others, in order to strengthen their ability to self-advocate.

CDD mobilizes people by engaging and sensitizing local communities on the needs, rights and issues facing persons with disability. CDD helps to form and support self-help groups comprised of persons with disabilities who come together to share information and resolve common problems, and also provides leadership training to group conveners. CDD supports its partner organizations, SHGs and APEX bodies to raise voice against abuse and rights violence of persons with disabilities, especially women and children with disabilities.

Disability Inclusive Local Governance has been one of the main focuses of CDD. The role of local government institutions (LGIs) is very important to ensure sustainable development for persons with disabilities. Most of the activities and services of the Central Government for the socio-economic development of rural masses are being implemented through LGIs. However, to ensure sustainable development in the society it is vital to include persons with disabilities in the development process.

CDD is working intensively with Local Government Institutions at local and National level to sensitize and build capacity of local government representatives; representatives of different development line ministries of the government at local level, and networks with Local Government Division, National Institute of Local Government to mainstream disability within its program planning and resource allocation.

Key Learning from CDDs intervention on Empowerment and Inclusive Development:

To enhance capacity and confidence of people with disabilities for their active participation and constructive engagement in community development process requires simultaneous interventions on all components and elements focussing on all barriers and appropriate ways of overcoming barriers.

  • A national policy on CBR is essentially required to ensure priority of inclusive development in human development practices in all national, sub-national and community level initiatives.
  • All concerned government ministries, department and agencies should individual disability inclusive polices and action plans for implementations.
  • A native language and popular version of CBR Guideline help facilitating better understanding on the CBR concept and its process of implementation at all levels
  • GO and NGO cooperation in implementing inclusive development programs minimizes the barriers of overcoming gaps and lapses of knowledge, skills and resources to address comprehensive interventions on all CBR components and elements.
  • It is imperative to provide community based home services, as it is challenging for many persons with disabilities to access rehabilitation services to reduce their level of impairment. It is difficult to access services from centre as they need to travel long distance.
  • Appropriate sharing of knowledge and skills on strategies, methods, tools and materials related to special need support in all components of interventions helps actors for active involvement. .
  • Persons with disabilities must be encouraged to explore different opportunities at government and private sectors. Sometimes they are reluctant fearing lengthy procedural requirements and fear of being exploited.
  • To enhance capacity and confidence of people with disabilities for their active participation and constructive engagement in community development process self help groups or collective forum of persons with disabilities need to be well nurtured.
  • It is important to also have essential knowledge on different marginalized groups in addition to disability which will enable us to also address people with disabilities within different marginalized groups.
  • Social Accountability strategies/tools improve citizen’s engagement and create bridge between persons with disabilities, communities and duty bearers/authorities/elected representatives contribute to strengthening transparency and accountability and improve service delivery
  • Leading role and involvement of persons with disabilities in decision making process is not only changing their lives in terms of participation, dignity etc but also community people are being sensitized about the potentiality & ability of persons with disability.
  • The challenges of women with disabilities are more intense than men with disabilities. Gender training along with their male counter parts can have a positive influence in addressing gender based factors that prompt exclusion.
  • It is absolutely essential that persons with disabilities are trained and given opportunities in leadership positions. It is only by encountering different contexts and doing by themselves will build their confidence and skills improve.

Conclusion:

Empowering persons with disabilities depends on building a right based empowered community addressing the issues of better standard of health and improved functional capacity; acquiring quality education in inclusive environment, improved access to livelihood and social protection, have meaningful social roles and responsibilities in their families and communities. A combined and comprehensive effort will lead to an empowered community having access of persons with disabilities and their family members make their own decisions and take responsibility for changing their lives.


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