by Kenneth Alabaraonye,
Advocacy for women with Disabilities Iniatiaive (AWWDI) funded by African Women’s Development Fund(AWOF) on Wednesday 2nd June, 2021 in Abuja organised a two day Advocacy training for women and girls with disabilities.
The Executive Director, AWWDI Mrs. Patience Dickson in her opening speech started with a unique women’s anthem which the participants who were women with disabilities sang along with her and thereafter, she stated that the Advocacy Project was geared towards inclusion and the implementation of Budgeting for Sexual Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) of Women and Girls with disabilities (WGWDs).
She further stressed on the need for the participants to pay attention and take advantage of this opportunity to equip themselves from the training to help foster the necessary change that is needed in the community.
She also urged them to ask questions as the training commences for more clarity on the thematic areas and also gave a brief relevant global and national context where following the adoption at the 61st session of the united nations general assembly on 13th December 2006, the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (CRPD) became operational as an international law on 3rd May, 2008. She said it was as a result of years of activism, campaigns and pressures from persons with disabilities, civil society and international agencies.
She added that the Nigeria government ratified the convention on 24th September 2010 and the convention is a legally binding instrument, once ratified by a country, and that the Nigerian government is duty bound to ensure that all laws, policies and programmes in the country are complied with its provisions. She also said that some of the provisions of the convention clearly emphasized the provision of reproductive health information and services, reproductive rights, and elimination of gender based violence.
Mr. Ayo Olaleye who facilitated the training started by encouraging the participants to take advantage of this training to arm themselves to be able to hold government accountable in their policies and programmes to enhance the inclusion of women and girls with disabilities in society.
He started by explaining the rationale for policy framework, the policy process, understanding Disability concepts, reproductive health rights, reproductive health services, society attitude towards the reproductive health and rights of Women and Girls with disabilities.
In the day two of the training the participants were also taken on the reasons for lack of access to reproductive health services, women and Girls with disabilities, Women groups targeted in the policy, goals of the policy framework and key objectives of the framework.
In addition the thematic areas of project treated includes;
- Increase knowledge, awareness creation, popular support and issues mainstreaming.
- Improve access to SRH for PWDs (access to education,access to SRH services, access to transport, access to information and communication.
- Inclusion of PWDs in health governance
- Partnership, collaboration and capacity building across stakeholders.
- Promotion of research, monitoring and evaluation for evidence based programming for PWDs.
At the end of the training, group work and exercise was conducted for the participants. The outcome serves as a prove that they all have gained something new especially the interactive sections which also evidently showed a high level of understanding of the topics of the training .
The participants were elated for having been given this wonderful opportunity by (AWWDI) and (AWOF) and they expressed their profound gratitude.
The training ended with a closing remarks by the project manager who expressed his happiness for the success recorded by participants and the facilitators who was very outstanding in impacting the needed knowledge, and congratulated the participants as new advocates of Disability issues.
The participants were women with Disabilities drawn from different clusters of persons with Disabilities.
SOME PICTURES OF THE WORKSHOP
