TQM report,
The Albino Foundation (TAF) in the quest of strengthening the capacity of emerging organizations of persons with disabilities organized a 3-day Capacity Building Workshop On Strategic Advocacy and Engagement for Organizations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) in FCT.
The workshop which took place in Abuja between 9th to 11th November, 2021 was funded by European Union through British Council under Agents For Citizens-Driven Transformation (ACT) Programme.
The founder and CEO, The Albino Foundation (TAF) in his welcome address said that it has become very important for OPDs especially emerging ones to understand and develop strategic tools in advocacy, understanding what it takes to advocacy and how to galvanize support for an effective advocacy.
He urged the OPDs to listen attentively to the resource persons and tap from them because there would be a lot of new approaches that may be useful as OPDs continue to engage for policy change in favour of persons with disabilities in Nigeria.
He also said that he is excited that the workshop has provided an opportunity for the inclusion of highly marginalized group among persons with disabilities which is persons with cognitive disabilities.
“I am happy that Downsyndrome foundation and The Engraced Ones represented this group in this workshop because they have highly neglected in the engagement of OPDs in Nigeria” he stated.
The Chairman, Joint National Association of Persons with Disabilities (FCT) Chapter, Abdulmumuni Ujah, in his goodwill message called for unification of purpose among different clusters and appeal for cluster leaders to ensure the need of other clusters are taken care of whenever they attend meetings because it is the most effective way the disability community can easily advocate for the inclusion of persons with disabilities in events across the country.
He called for more unity among OPDs because together, much more progress would be made in the area of advocacy.
The Executive Secretary, National Commission for Persons with Disabilities (NCPWD) ably represented by Lawrence Idemudia, the acting director, Social Integration, NCPWD in his goodwill message appreciated Jake Epelle for a laudable initiative of bring ODPs together to learn how to better advocate and urged OPDs not to take the opportunity with levity because it is a rare opportunity which provided wonderful opportunity of learning new strategic advocacy.
He said that we should try to learn anything possible because it is another way we are acquiring knowledge to present our issues better to the public so that they would have a better understanding of our issues and act appropriately towards them.
Damian Ivom, the Programme Manager at TAF while stating the objective of the workshop said that the workshop is all about inclusive development which is basically carrying out advocacy on Disability Act as well as mainstreaming Persons with disabilities in government policies and programmes and that of the private sector.
Speaking further, he said that the workshop would be focusing on strategic advocacy and engagement ensuring that PWDs are mainstreaming in all facets of social, economic and political development in Nigeria. Identifying the challenges faced by PWDs and how PWDs would be engaging the media and all relevant stakeholders to carryout effective advocacy towards addressing their challenges.
The facilitator, Suleiman Musa, Special Adviser to the Director General, Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) in his presentation emphasized on how to engage the media to drive effective advocacy. He used practical examples to explain how OPDs can effectively use the media to advocate.
He urged OPDs to take advantage of all media platforms because media to an extent is free and they can be strategically engaged to help promote any cause.
He advised that OPDs should be mindful of events for example different international days and happenings to draw attention of the media because that when it would have the audience. He also suggested leveraging or taking advantage of a news makers to drive home our issues. For example, one can get media attention and free media when you pay an advocacy visit to ministers or other notable government functionaries.
The participants also learnt about writing advocacy letters(Press releases/statements), interviews and other media advocacy tools.
Other interesting topics at the workshop that the participants benefitted from were institutional advocacy, policy advocacy etc.
The workshop was participatory, there are groupworks in between for better understanding of the participants and also to draw up practical action plan that would be useful for advocacy and engagement of public and private institutions.
TQM reports that TAF as a follow up on this engagement would form a forum that would provide opportunity for sharing of ideas and opportunities among OPDs, unify the OPDs for more result in advocacy.
The workshop brought together different organizations of persons with disabilities considering different clusters of disabilities, individual NGOs, women group and cognitive disability group who have been excluded in the past.
