Put people with disabilities in the driving seat!

Dear Supporters,

These are exciting times for The Rickshaw Project. As we strive to advocate for and raise awareness about people with disabilties - we have made significant strides to further a mandate through hiring, public speaking and product innovation - demonstrating that we are walking our talk!

The Rickshaw Project’s core team of three physically-impaired individuals after having undergone extensive training are now going to be led, from 10th February 2014, by Zulqarnain Asghar - the first visually impaired clinical psychologist in Pakistan. Zulqarnain brings with him 10 years of advocacy and awareness campaign experience in the disability sector and NOWPDP is thrilled and honored to have him onboard.

But the work has not stopped, the Project Drivers, with the assistance of the Advocacy & Training Officer, are actively involved in collaborative efforts with educational and private institutions in the last 3 months while catering to regular cutomers:

• NOWPDP - our parent organization - has recently relocated to a beautiful house in the center of old Karachi as part of its initiative to take ownership and build an accessible office!
• The Inclusive Society at The Lyceum School is working with us to create materials to use for our advocacy and sensitization efforts;
• SZABIST (an engineering and social sciences university) has adopted The Rickshaw Project as a case study for their product design course. The students will be looking at elements of advocacy, sustanibility, engineering - through the lens of Finance, Social Sciences and Engineering coursework!
• Engro Corp initiated a diversity initiative to make their workplace more inclusive; the team will be working to sensitize their workforce across the country and working with over 3000 employees of Engro!
• The Rickshaw Team recently operated a shuttle service for the Pakistan Urban Forum - South Asian Cities Conference '14 at Frere Hall. We hope that those in attendance will raise the interests of various unrepresented and minority groups, including people with disabilities. The team has first hand experience of how exclusionary the urban planning process has been so far. Questions about institutionalized lack of accessibility; be it mass transport, housing, public institutions, etc - were asked and a dialogue was initiated. 

MOVING PEOPLE, CHANGING MINDS!!

Best Regards,

The Rickshaw Project Team

Links:

• The cover photo features The Rickshaw Project