by Chris Agbo,
Disability Rights Advocacy Center (DRAC) with support from RoLAC, organized the 2021 edition of her annual Disability Innovation Lab themed: #HackSGBV Innovation Challenge. It provided opportunities for young innovators and design thinkers from across Nigeria to generate innovative and disability-specific solutions towards addressing the different forms of violence faced by women and girls with disabilities, especially around the promotion of consent culture and improved reporting of SGBV by survivors.
The teams who participated were invited to Abuja for the finale and were selected from 100s of applications from across the country. A rigorous selection process which included a virtual preliminary pitch of ideas saw participants been grouped into four teams for the finale.
The finale lasted three days and teams were coached by DRAC’s team of experts to fine tune their ideas. They were actively trained on the concepts of disability and inclusion, gender, forms of violence against women and girls with disabilities, reporting mechanisms etc.
In a closely fought grand finale, the teams gave the judges a difficult time as all the ideas were well thought-out by the teams with guidance from the innovation experts on ground. Team dynamite (Report It) was awarded the winner by the team of judges which included seasoned disability rights advocates such as the Executive Director, DRAC, Dr. Irene Patrick-Ogbogu, Lawrence Idemudia of the National Commission for Persons with Disabilities, Agbo Christian Obiora from The Qualitative Magazine (TQM), Betty Mube from the Joint National Association of Persons with Disabilities and Obinna Ekujereonye from Disability Advancement Initiative.
The Executive Director, Dr. Irene Patrick-Ogbogu in her remarks thanked everyone present for their dedication to the issues faced by women and girls with disabilities in Nigeria, particularly with reference to SGBV. She specially thanked the teams for their resolve to finding sustainable, innovative, disability-specific solutions to address justice issues faced by persons with disabilities women and girls.
DRAC announced that the first (Team UAR with Sabi Game) and second (Team Unboxed with Oya Talk App) runner-up ideas will also receive ideation grants from DRAC.
