This project will mobilize and build capacities of community volunteers to lead in linking girls and women with disabilities to essential services and dialogue platforms on which policy decisions are made. That will begin with enumerating persons with disabilities and developing a database thereof, which defines their individual challenges, before rolling out customized empowering activities that enable beneficiaries to solve their own problems through policy advocacy and entrepreneurship.
In Zimbabwe very little is known about persons with disabilities (PWD) because successive censuses and population-based researches have failed to enumerate them. Service providers such as schools, health facilities and courts lack experts in sign language, braille or mental patients' handling. Compounded by the stigmatization of PWD because of misinformed beliefs that disability is a result of past evil deeds, these problems culminate in the marginalization of PWD, especially female ones.
The project will gather qualitative and quantitative data on disabilities to produce a database that will inform the strategies and targets for programs addressing problems facing PWD. It will use research evidence to engage service providers in dialogues to sensitize them about disability and promote inclusive and accessible services. Community volunteers will be technically supported to organize PWD into support groups through which they will do their own advocacy and better access services.
The project's baseline study will serve as a model to inspire the design of scaled up population-based research on disability in Zimbabwe, enabling multiple stakeholders to know more about disability and formulate disability-sensitive policies and initiate improved programs to support PWD. Dialogues with service providers will improve the access and affordability of essential services for PWDs, raising the numbers thereof who fully enjoy their rights to education, healthcare, justice, etc.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
