In October, the Women in Aid and Development group hosted an online event, focusing on the issue of ‘Improving lives of people with disabilities in development’ which featured three guest speakers and was facilitated by Sport Matters CEO Jackie Lauff.
With a large online audience logged on, Lauff prefaced the discussion by underlining the importance of looking at the topic from the platform of human rights, referencing the UNs Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability.
The three female speakers hailed from a cross-section of the development sector and brought to the discussion a wealth of experience and stories which they told with passion and enthusiasm.
Jess Richardson, a young woman who worked as a volunteer in Vanuatu for the past three years in the area of disability inclusion and equity in sport, spoke of working with those from the disability community in an effort to raise awareness and advocate for an equal playing field, as well as identifying potential talent for the Vanuatu Paralympic Committee, an organisation with which she came to work closely.
Through her work as an Australian volunteer based with Vanuatu’s Olympic Committee, giving her access to a large cross-section of the national sports federations, Richardson underlined the challenges she identified that are often present in a development context such as financial, logistical and geographic.
In Vanuatu, since 2017, sport has become a major tool in highlighting the plight of people with disabilities. Through community work around creating good communication and partnerships with disability sector service organisations and advocates, participation in sport by members of the disability community has increased markedly with community perception and attitudes having changed tangibly due to the resulting raised awareness.
Joining Jess Richardson as a guest for the online discussion was Chris Kerr, Regional Manager with Hope Community Services, who had volunteered in Asia on a DESE (Department of Education, Skills and Employment) project. Her experience working and volunteering in Laos, as a person with a disability, was underlined with personal and professional challenges on both a cultural and logistical level.
Kerr spoke of her strong advocacy for people with a disability to be equally considered for volunteer roles in development. She also spoke of needing to evaluate and change the local community perceptions of appropriate human rights and basic accessibility needs.
These two women were joined by one more in the discussion, Alex Gartrell from World Vision, who was able to bring to the table working in the area of disability inclusion in the development sector from the perspective of a large mainstream organisation. Her experience in advocating for inclusion with a focus on living with a disability in rural Cambodia had her also relating stories about the challenges of working in the sector and of bringing those of the women in this sector to light.
Gartrell is also the Chair at the Australian Disability and Development Consortium (ADDC). She has worked on increasing the number of M&E assessments on programs into which she has tried to introduce disability inclusion as well as the disproportionate impact on People with Disabilities of the Covid-19 virus.
The WiAD discussion forum lasted for over two hours and brought to light, through relatable, anecdotal tales, many of the issues which have become the focus of disability inclusion work in the development sector, with many thoughts and perspectives shared with enthusiasm and passion.
For further information on the Women in Aid and Development network visit: Women in Aid and Development (womeninaiddevelopment.com)