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Vulnerability links poverty to disability in a causal relationship. Poor people are more likely to be disabled. They are exposed to, and are usually defenseless against, disease, malnutrition and violence; they may have to do the dangerous work that others refuse; their living environment can be unsanitary and otherwise adverse to their physical well-being. Handicapped individuals know poverty because they are routinely denied employment as well as access to social services, education and community life.
Over the past years the IAF increased its outreach and the grants funded in this area. Among its grantees are groups with projects that focus on prevention, education, community-based rehabilitation, and job and enterprise development. IAF travel grants permitted Latin American disability activists to participate in negotiating sessions of the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The U.N. General Assembly adopted the draft Convention on Dec. 13, 2006, and it is been ratified by most of the countries in the region.
Recent Projects:
The Solidarity Taxi program, managed by Gestion Ecuador, offers services that reach approximately 10,000 people with disabilities. They offer training to taxi drivers, 2,000 transit police officers and representatives of at least 100 social service agencies in Quito. The focus of the program is to raise awareness of disability issues and improving the quality of life and economic situation of Ecuadorians with disabilities. To participate in the program, the drivers attend training in how to accommodate the needs of this clientele and they must offer the appropriate discounts. They ferry people to medical appointments, physical therapy, destinations for errands and to the polls during elections. With IAF's support, GE expanded its program to Guayaquil, Cuenca and Tulcán.
Fundación Red de Sobrevivientes y Personas con Discapacidad (Red de Sobrevivientes), works with Salvadorans with disabilities from eight departments to develop their grassroots associations and to boost their income through funding and technical assistance for their microbusiness and agricultural initiatives.
Fundación Saraki has helped seven Paraguayan communities organize boards that represent persons with disabilities, make their needs visible and work with other civil society entities, government and the private sector to improve awareness of disability rights. Saraki’s coordinating committee ensures that the local and central government comply with existing laws by providing access to buildings, education and health services for disabled Paraguayans.
On land donated by the municipality in the districts of Tambo and Chuschi in Ayacucho, Perú, Desarrollo Integral de la Mujer en la Sociedad Andina del Perú (DEIMUS) built two small centers to train Peruvians with physical disabilities in raising and marketing cuyes (guinea pigs). Trainees can also apply, individually or as a group, for a loan to purchase materials and cuyes to start their own enterprises.
Additional Reading(s):
Challenging Assumptions: Psychiatric Disabilities and Grassroots Development
Among individuals with disabilities, those with psychiatric conditions are perhaps the least understood. Many suffer in silence, fearful of the ostracism, confinement, isolation and hardship associated with being labeled mentally ill. For years, treatment itself has been the subject of controversy and exposés. The social activism of the 1960s included the emergence of an anti-psychiatric movement that decried hospital conditions, involuntary commitments and coercive methods and, in its more extreme manifestation, questioned the validity of psychiatry and its diagnoses.
The IAF has interpreted its mission as calling for the inclusion of the disabled in the development process, and in 1972, within a year of launching its grant program, it made its first such award, funding a conference on disability rights. Since then, grants have supported efforts throughout Latin America and the Caribbean to rehabilitate people with physical, sensory and cognitive disabilities, train them, encourage their enterprises and educate the public in their abilities and challenges. But examples of grants for people with psychiatric or psychosocial disabilities are much rarer. Poring over four decades of files some years ago, I found one documenting the work of Fundación Granja Taller de Asistencia Colombiana (FUNGRATA), a 1987 grantee that provided an alternative to psychiatric hospitals for indigent Colombians with schizophrenia, which I set aside on my shelf where it remained for some years awaiting further research. More...