Empower 50 Disable People in China

One of the reasons that the People with Disability are marginalized is that they are unseen in the society due to the ill-build accessible facilities.

The Disable People-unfriendly environment block the People with Disability out of the public eye, which make the public unaware of the existence of People with Disability, not mention their needs, left the People with Disability trapped in the vicious circle. To break this chain, one of the critical steps is to improve their visibility in the public.

That's where the museum trip begins.

We accompanied more than 30 People with Disability to visit local museum. This trip is designed with two subjects. One is to encourage the People with Disability to walk out into  the public, which will help not only improve the publici awareness about the People with Disability but increase the exposure of the People with Disability in public. Another is to inspect the accessible facilities of the museum. 

The participants were interested and excited during the whole trip. They visited the museum as well as inspect the accessible facilities. 

"I'm very happy to partictipate this trip and I learned a lot. I'm expecting next trip." Lu said happily. 

In the future, we will organize more trips like that.  

According to the files issued by China Disabled Person’s Federation(CDPF), the disabled person can be categorized into five types: the hearing impaired, the visual impaired, physical impaired, intellectual and development disabled, and mental impaired. The huge differences among these five types of disabilities hinders them not only from understanding each other, but also from cooperation and communications. For example, when the physical impaired organization works hard to improve the accessory facilities, their perspectives of criteria for improvement are of physical impairment, without awareness of perspectives of other types of disabilities. In a word, the wall created by the impairment has impaired the cooperation and communications among the disabled person themselves, which, in the long run, frustrates the development of the disabled.

To break the wall among the disabled, we worked with the disabled person’s NGO to bridge the gap. We worked together mapping out the strategy of Integration of the Disabled Person. First, we hold an awareness training about the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities(CRDP). Then we discussed about the wall among the disabled and its impact for the disabled. The participants, including the hearing impaired, the visual impaired and the physical impaired, agreed to work together to improve the accessory facilities in the future. The first step to break the wall is to set up a three-party cooperation team and the first mission of this new team has been made: to examine the accessory facilities of local museum.