Organisations of individuals with disabilities exist all all over the world. They’re teams that deliver collectively folks with disabilities to share their experience and expertise, empower their members, and advocate for change.

Involving these teams in challenge planning and implementation is essential to Sightsavers’ work. Folks with disabilities are specialists in their very own circumstances and impairments, and this makes them finest positioned to articulate the problems that have an effect on them.

After we started engaged on the Ghana Somubi Dwumadie programme, we knew we wanted to do numerous work round advocating for the rights of individuals with disabilities. We wished to uphold the precept of ‘nothing about us, with out us’ – so to undertake that work, we wanted to companion with organisations of individuals with disabilities (OPDs).

Ghana Somubi Dwumadie (Ghana Participation Programme) is a four-year incapacity programme in Ghana, with a selected give attention to psychological well being. This programme is funded with UK assist from the UK authorities. The programme aimed to enhance entry to well being providers, advocate for disability-inclusive laws and insurance policies, and deal with stigma and discrimination round incapacity and psychological well being circumstances.

What we did

To start out with, we approached the Ghana Federation of Incapacity Organisations (GFDO) – the nationwide umbrella organisation of OPDs in Ghana. The federation has existed for 30 years and its community consists of the Ghana Blind Union, the Ghana Society for the Bodily Challenged, the Ghana Affiliation for Individuals with Albinism, the Nationwide Affiliation for the Deaf, and the Psychological Well being Society of Ghana.

We carried out due diligence to grasp the federation’s capability and realised there have been some areas we wanted to strengthen. In response to this want, we got here up with a technical help plan and chosen three essential areas to give attention to: management strengthening, producing information for advocacy, and monitoring and analysis.

By working with the federation, we may guarantee that many teams of individuals with disabilities, particularly minority teams which can be typically underrepresented – together with folks with albinism and folks with psychosocial disabilities – may take part absolutely and instantly profit from the challenge.

The challenge supported OPDs to strengthen their very own organisational capability. We carried out management coaching in 16 areas of Ghana to make sure that at native in addition to nationwide degree, folks with disabilities may use the coaching to advocate for his or her rights.

We additionally centered on coverage change, working with OPDs on a nationwide incapacity invoice modification to make sure it met the requirements of the UN Conference on the Rights of Individuals with Disabilities and used the suitable human rights language. And due to advocacy and influencing work by our OPD companions, the federal government has dedicated to creating 111 deliberate new hospitals accessible for folks with disabilities.