Current News
- Young Voices to benefit from European Commission grant
- Vitol Charitable Foundation increases support
- Rotary extends funding
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Lagos Cheshire Home to be upgraded thanks to trust donation
- First-ever disabilities job fair in Bangalore a big success
- New employment training partnerships
- Award-winning filmmaker trains Young Voices
- New disability resource centre founded
- Professor Groce chairs event at international AIDS conference
- World Bank Country Director joins Philippines campaign
The European Commission will fund the continuing development and capacity building of 47 Young Voices groups in 17 countries around the world over the next three years. The grant of 997,000 Euros will help the young campaigners aged 16 to 25 to expand their influence and lobby more effectively for the human rights of people with disabilities.
Vitol Charitable Foundation has extended its support of LCD’s international projects through two grants of $100,000 each over two years for projects in Liberia and Zambia. The Liberia project will see essential modernisation work to the Antoinette Tubman Cheshire Home, development of new day and respite services, and the creation of a livelihoods resource centre. The Zambia grant will support the inclusive education programme in Chongwe District, through which hundreds of children with disabilities will attend five mainstream local schools. For the last three years, Vitol Charitable Foundation has been supporting the inclusive education project in the Philippines.
Rotary International Britain and Ireland has funded inclusive education programmes in Uganda for the past year. Now the Rotary Club of Norwich has extended this support through a £7,000 donation to continue the very successful inclusive education project in Kabala, Sierra Leone.
The Lef-Pillon Trust has donated £17,000 to support the renovation of the Lagos Cheshire Home in Nigeria. The grant will also cover training to enable young residents of the home to become self employed so that they can work towards greater independence. Finally, the donation will help to raise awareness of the human rights of people with disabilities among people living at the home through developing knowledge of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
An inaugural job fair for people with disabilities in Bangalore, India, attracted an amazing 3,300 people with disabilities who wanted to enter the job market or find new employment. At the end of the daylong event, which was organisation by several employment and training partners including Leonard Cheshire Disability, 171 candidates had received offer letters, over 434 plus candidates had been shortlisted by employers and 536 were short listed for the training. The labour minister N Bachegowda spoke at the fair’s closing ceremony and stressed the need for more job events for people with disabilities. He also advised the Cheshire Livelihood Resource Centre in Bangalore in how to apply for support for sign language interpreters through the Commissioner for the Disabled.
Livelihoods Resource Centres in South Asia have forged successful alliances with leading local companies to provide high-quality training programmes for people with disabilities. For example, the Bangladesh LRC signed an MOU with the country’s manufacturers and exporters association. Such training partnerships are highly sustainable and will feed into the employment of disabled people in each country.
Eleven Young Voices members from five Asian countries gathered in Colombo, Sri Lanka from 3 – 6 August for training with award-winning Indian filmmaker Nina Subramani. Together they produced four films and four audio broadcasts and they were also interviewed on MTV Asia and Youth Asia TV. We can look forward to seeing and hearing the results of their hard work on the Young Voices website, www.lcdisability.org/youngvoices.
South Asia’s five disability resource centres (DRCs) now function as ‘one stop shops’ where people with disabilities and their families can take advantage of approximately 40 different types of individualised services. On 7 July 2010 a sixth DRC was inaugurated in the South Indian town of Cuddalore with a ceremony in which the foundation stone was laid. During the proceedings, the District Differently Abled Welfare Officer (a local government official), said ‘the DRC would provide disabled people an opportunity to raise their voice and address their concerns through proper channels.’ He and representatives from other organisations promised to provide complete cooperation and assistance.
Professor Nora Groce, Director of the Leonard Cheshire Disability and Inclusive Development Centre at University College London, chaired a satellite event at the XVIII International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria on 21 July. The conference is the world’s most important forum for sharing HIV/AIDS research and good practice and Professor Groce, an expert in AIDS and disability, was chair of an event exploring country-level perspectives on the subject: Designed as ‘a collaboration to enhance integration of an inclusive and accessible approach in AIDS programming for persons with disabilities,’ the event featured speakers from the UN and government and civil society representatives from several countries.
Bert Hoffman, the Country Director for the World Bank in the Philippines, took part in the launch of the 1Goal: Education for all campaign in Manila on 23 July. This launch was initiated by the Young Voices and inclusive education team in partnership with the Department of Education and the National Council of Disability Affairs. 1Goal is an international campaign around the FIFA World Cup calling on governments to do everything they can to provide education to the 72 million children currently out of school.
