By Chris Agbo
Disability Rights Advocacy Center (DRAC) on 15th to 19th June, 2020 in Abuja organized a five-day training on Disability Inclusive Development (DID) and Project Management for her staff, Organization of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) and Women’s Rights Groups.
The training is an activity under DRAC’s Break the Cycle (BTC) project supported by DFID and CBM, an empowerment project that focuses on combating the drivers of violence and discrimination against women and girls with disabilities in FCT and Nasarawa state.
The five-day meeting commenced with Disability Inclusive Development (DID) training which lasted for two days and was followed by the three-day Project Management training.
The Executive Director of DRAC, Dr. Irene Ojiugo Patrick-Ogbogu while making her opening remarks said that the training was two-in-one; that is, two different trainings designed to happen back-to-back. “As the BTC project is geared towards improving the economic status of women and girls with disabilities, for it to be successful, we identified the need to strengthen the capacity of DRAC team, different disability clusters, women’s rights groups and other relevant partners.” The training will improve participants’ knowledge on factoring disability inclusion in their project implementation as well as equip them with the skills needed to manage projects from inception to completion.
Speaking further, Dr. Irene said she was hopeful that at the end of the training, the leaders of the different disability clusters and women’s rights groups present would begin to apply the acquired knowledge in implementing their projects and also step down the knowledge to members of their team.
The facilitator for Disability Inclusive Development took the participants through topics such as Definitions and Evolving Concepts of Disability, Models of Disability, Different Types of Impairment and Disability, the Disability Inclusive Development Approach, Leadership Disability Sector and its Challenges. The Leadership Disability Sector and its Challenges session essentially was engaging and interactive in delivery. Technical feedbacks were gathered from the participants.
There were also presentations on critical topics such as Security and Disability in Emergency Situations, Legislations and Policies (UNCRPD and Nigeria Disability Act), Principles of Universal Design and Reasonable Accommodation & Accessibility. Accessibility was described as a systematic solution targeting all groups of persons with disability and reasonable accommodation describes an individual person’s situation and needs. While accessibility could be progressively realized, reasonable accommodation is mandatory.
Participants were further introduced to how to engage the best and effective approach in advocacy as well as how to adopt Washington Group of Questions in disability inclusion programming.
The second phase of the training, the Project Management training was equally engaging. The facilitators introduced participants to the core principles of inclusive project planning and different stages in project implementation. The appropriate tools for pre-project analysis, project planning, project implementation, monitoring and evaluation and project close-out were also discussed.
The training featured practical sessions in forms of group works which entailed applying situation analysis, stakeholders’ analysis and needs/priority analysis to a specific project each group intended to implement. In planning the project, they were expected to write out their pre-project analysis, set out objectives for their projects and activities under the projects, with expected results and their indicators as well as the exit strategies at the completion of the project.
The training was very in-depth and achieved its objectives as participants attested to the fact that their knowledge on the training topics had greatly improved.
The participants were drawn from the various disability clusters and leaders and in the disability community, as well as women’s rights organizations.
SOME PICTURES OF THE TRAINING:
