Yafaau's blog

Date: 19 April 2008

Venue: Youth Centre, Henveiru, Male’

Time: 8 pm – 10.30pm

Organised by:

Volunteers (Yasif, Nelfa, Ifham), Amaresh, Rizwana, Ashfaaq, Jeroen and supported by Handicap International

Attended by:

About 60 people including parents of persons with disability and persons with disability

To inform and exchange ideas about forming a group/association by parents and persons with disability

• to deal with disability issues in Maldives
• to work as a group in confronting government authorities regarding the ratification of the Convention of Rights for Persons with Disability

What happened in the meeting:

First, the turnout was very good. Many parents of persons with disability attended the meeting hoping to find out what Handicap Intl and the volunteers had to say – probably to see if it was anything they have not heard before.

Introduction:

I introduced the objectives of the meeting above, and emphasized on the point that it is an information discussion, we are volunteers with little experience in the relate field (except for Yasif) and that we are there to ask for their opinion about forming a group that will be to work in solving disability issues.

With this introduction, some parents raised their serious concern over the effectiveness of such a group, citing examples of meetings they had 10 years ago with the formation of Care Society. They also raised concern about the unyielding hard work they have done in the past as individuals to make all sorts of facilities: health services, education, etc better for their children. The main point here is that they tried individually. Hence it was a good opportunity to highlight that individual efforts make little affect on concerned authorities, thus explaining the importance of forming a group. Understandably, it was difficult to sell this idea to the parents who have been through too much already to listen to the same thing all over again.

However, everyone stayed for the rest of the presentations which talked about:

Benefits or forming a group/ How to go about it: Jeorone and Yasif

I think this session was good in explaining the different sorts of groups that can be formed, such as NGO or CBO.

Experience of parents from the Thalassemia Association: By parents of Thalassemia parents group. Explained forming groups can result in successful/ enjoyable social activities for their children

Presentation by Rizwana and Ashfaaq from Maldivian Deaf Society (in the making): Explained how they formed their group, discussed different issues and identified ways of tackling their problems, and what they have achieved so far (News interpretation and Sign language classes).

Organising for Disability Sports sessions: By Jeroen. Explained how a simple act of organization can benefit a group of people, and how not doing it will affect the group as a whole.

Open Discussion Session (started at almost 10 pm):

Nelfa, Yasif, and I asked everyone interested about the idea of forming a group, some who were reluctant and pretty opposed to idea also decided to stay for a while. A parent gave the idea of making a form with all the details about the child/person with disability, including what the need most from a group, what their other basic needs are, etc.

Most participants were open to this idea. About 5-6 parents expressed interest to work on the information form and the initial discussions about the formation of such a group. Others gave ideas about making subgroups according to needs basis.

Outcome:

It was decided that we will work on the forms first since there wasn’t much time to go through each parent’s ideas, issues, etc. The form is to be prepared with contribution by parents who expressed interest to participate in this stage. One parent actually called us up the following day to see how we should proceed now.

We are planning to hold a second meeting in the second week of May, with the interested parents about (15-16) to do analysis of their current problems, agree and write down basic strategies and objectives of the group, etc.

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