Economic Empowering and supporting girls and women with disabilities to start up sustainable, market and technological relevant income generating projects.
Objective of the project: Sustainable livelihoods for the poor and marginalized girls and women with disabilities in Monaragala district.
This project will solve two challenges faced by WwDs: Extreme poverty through economic empowerment and lack of social inclusion through continuous mentorship. Women and girls with disabilities experience double discrimination, which places them at higher risk of gender-based violence, sexual abuse, neglect, maltreatment and exploitation by society as well as family.
Disability places a set of extra demands or challenges on the family system; most of these demands last for a long time. Many of these challenges cut across disability type, age, and type of family in which the person lives. There is the financial burden associated with getting health, education, and social services; buying or renting equipment and devices; making accommodations to the home; transportation; and medications and special food. The disability can consume a disproportionate share of a family's resources of time, energy, and money, so that other individual and family needs go unmet. The family's lifestyle and leisure activities are altered. A family's dreams and plans for the future may be given up. Social roles are disrupted because often there is not enough time, money, or energy to devote to them. There are a whole set of issues that create emotional strain, including worry, guilt, anxiety, anger, and uncertainty about the cause of the disability, about the future, about the needs of other family members, about whether one is providing enough assistance, and so on. This issues especially higher risk of the girls and women with disabilities rather than other men or boys with disabilities.
Poverty among women with disabilities is concerning, and requires programs focused specifically on alleviating poverty among women with disabilities, rather than just persons with disabilities or women. There are unique issues that women with disabilities face which must be addressed. The fact that the economy improved and poverty rates decreased for women as a whole, yet remained the same for women with disabilities, there’s a long road ahead to address the needs of this specific population.
The girls and women with disabilities having a economic sustainability their future life is secure and stable. If she has a financial capacity family lifestyle will change and they will treat her as an economic partner of the family rather than the dependent or major burden for them.
Specific objectives of the project
- Empowering poor and marginalized people affected by disability to improve their economic status in Monaragala District.
- To enhance knowledge, skill and capacity of persons with disability on profitable and disabled people friendly economic development activities.
- To establish a financial support scheme to provide Persons with disability access to financial and input support to successfully start their concerned economic development activities.
- Introduce and practice Social enterprise concept with project beneficiaries and ensure organizational sustainability.
Project Idea;
This project will solve two challenges faced by PwDs: Extreme poverty through economic empowerment and lack of social inclusion, through continuous mentorship and linkage with markets and financial institutions.
Concise Problem Statement;
Monaragala district statistics indicate that over 12000 of the persons who are living in district experience some form of disability. The persons with disabilities are more likely to experience socioeconomic exclusion such as less education, poor access to health services, lack of mobility due to inappropriately designed infrastructure, lower employment and higher poverty rates. Furthermore, these people face extreme social exclusion resulting in lack of access to education and economic opportunities. Due to these facts, economic empowerment is vital towards eliminating challenges facing upwards. Belonging to the poor parents and families, the people with disability lead their lives in a miserable condition. Unfortunately, Govt initiatives for the disabled peoples are hardly available while NGOs and civil societies do not have adequate programs for them. Considering the situation, WOPD has undertaken an initiative to promote the livelihood, their rights, easy living and economic self-sufficiency of the people with disability.
In our society, the disabled persons are often looked upon as a burden on the society and are unable to become productive members of the society. In the past, the disability related issues have been ignored widely both by the Govt and the NGOs. Currently they are being recognized as a cross cutting development issues and also are gradually being seen more as an issue of right than charity. In order to enhance socioeconomic development, the country cannot afford to leave these segments of people out of the development process.
Objective: The WOPD-FCIL promotes full access, equal opportunities, and participation for all people living with disabilities by strengthening living rights.
WOPD, we define independence as a person with a disability, reaching their highest potential. Because every person and every disability are unique, this can mean different things for different people. Someone with a cognitive disability will have very different needs and goals from someone with a spinal cord injury. To meet the unique needs of each person, our Facilitation Center for Independent Living. (FCLI) Program builds a community around a person with disabilities that includes peers and professionals.
The Facilitation Center for Independent Living (FCLI) plays a key role by working with the person with a disability to identify their needs and set individual independent living goals. Then, the Independent Living Program engages the person to provide the training, resources and environment to work towards and achieve those goals. With this involvement and by working on skills, receiving the appropriate care, getting out into society, and having a community of support, people with disabilities of all kinds are successfully living independently and to their fullest potential.
Services offered at the Facilitation Center for Independent Living. (FCLI):
- Entrepreneur skills training
- Care coordination
- Recreation
- Peer support
- Counseling
- Work, Employment Network
- Provide Technical Assistance to employers.
- Interpreter services,
- Braille instruction.
- Health Care.
- Support device development.
Section offered at the Facilitation Center for Independent Living. (FCLI);
- Assistive Technology & Durable Medical Equipment section
- Vocational Rehabilitation section
- Products and Services marketing section
- Advocacy and counseling section.
- Model free school
- Disability child day care center.
- Tourist Transnational center
- Physiotherapy section.
Specific objectives of the project
- a) To encourage and promote the participation, to the fullest extent possible, of disabilities in mainstream sporting activities at all levels;
- b) To ensure that disabilities have an opportunity to organize, develop and participate in disability-specific sporting;
Persons with disabilities often face societal barriers and disability evokes negative perceptions and discrimination in many societies. As a result of the stigma associated with disability, persons with disabilities are generally excluded from education, employment and community life which deprives them of opportunities essential to their social development, health and well-being. In some societies, persons with disabilities are considered dependent and seen as incapable, thus fostering inactivity, which often causes individuals with physical disabilities to experience restricted mobility beyond the cause of their disability.
The unique ability of sports to transcend linguistic, cultural and social barriers makes it an excellent platform for strategies of inclusion and adaptation. Furthermore, the universal popularity of sport and its physical, social and economic development benefits make it an ideal tool for fostering the inclusion and well-being of persons with disabilities.
Sport can help reduce the stigma and discrimination associated with disability because it can transform community attitudes about persons with disabilities by highlighting their skills and reducing the tendency to see the disability instead of the person. Through sport, persons without disabilities interact with persons with disabilities in a positive context, forcing them to reshape assumptions about what persons with disabilities can and cannot do.
DAP project