Disability and Development Partners grew out of the Jaipur Limb Campaign, which had been an active member of the international campaign to ban landmines, and worked to widen access to assistive devices and rehabilitation. The name change reflected a broadening of the charity’s mission to incorporate all kinds of disability-related work in low-income countries.
DDP helped establish rehabilitation centres providing prosthetic, orthotic and therapy services in Mozambique, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and India. The Indian specialist organization Mobility India provided formal training and professional skills to over 50 people from other DDP partners, who returned to improve and enhance their own rehabilitation services for disabled people, including prefabricated components and joints for distribution in polio-affected areas.
The charity continued to support disabled people’s campaigns for human rights and inclusion in Mozambique, Angola, Nepal, India and Ethiopia.
In Nepal, DDP helped the pioneering mental health organization KOSHISH establish the country’s first drop-in centre for mentally ill people and their families, and a safe haven for women forced into destitution because of mental illness.
Community-based rehabilitation and livelihoods programmes helped to reduce poverty among thousands of disabled people’s households in India, Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde, Ethiopia and Nepal. And Inclusive education and training programmes in India, Ethiopia and Nepal enabled hundreds of disabled, Deaf, hard-of-hearing and other marginalized children and young people to have a chance in education and change their lives for the better.
DDP conducted and published research on HIV, AIDS and disability in Mozambique, and on the education and needs of Deaf children in Burundi.
The project Twunganire Abahungutse with ACPDH in Burundi, enabling the resettlement and reintegration of displaced people, won the 2015 Ockenden International Prize.
You can read about some of DDP’s projects here.
Objectives and guiding principles
- Supporting Disabled People’s Organizations
- Reducing poverty among disabled people and their families
- Promoting the inclusion of disabled children in education
- Promoting appropriate and low-cost assistive devices and physical rehabilitation
- Facilitating South-to-South and regional exchange of information and skills
Our vision
DDP’s vision is of a society where disabled women, men, boys and girls – and the most vulnerable and marginalized people – have equal social, economic and civil rights.
Inclusion has been at the heart of all our work, so disabled and vulnerable people can engage and lead initiatives for change and equality of opportunity.
Our focus has been on the needs of vulnerable children and adults, and carers of disabled people, including disabilities that are not so obvious such as deafness, hearing loss and mental illness.
Our approach to partnership has been responsive and flexible: working with partners to translate ideas into tangible and effective programmes.
Partnerships
Working in partnership has been our dedicated priority. Run by and for disabled people, our local partners are best placed to understand their needs and challenges.
We have played an essential practical role for our partners: supporting, developing and realizing projects, raising funds, building capacities in project and financial management, ensuring that objectives are met, and facilitating south-to-south exchanges of experience.
As they have worked towards a sustainable future, many of our partner organizations have used our partnership as a springboard to funding, independence and success.
Governance
DDP was founded in 1992 as a UK registered charity and company limited by guarantee, governed by a board of Trustees providing strategic and financial oversight.
Many thanks to all those who served as Trustees over the years, bringing all sorts of expertise, energy and commitment. And to the most recent board members Maggie Owen, Michelle Pisano, Dave Shraga, Oliver Springate-Baginski and Joshua Swirsky, with the chairpersonship of John Whitehead.
People
Kamala Achu founded and directed DDP – for the first 29 years! – with a team whose members over those years included Debbie Risborough, Maggie Owen, Simon Godziek, Chris Hildebrand, Caroline Winchurch, Carmen Mayblin, Kelly James, Isabel Silva… and most recently Adam Berry, who took the reins from 2021-2026.
Many other people have given their valuable time and expertise as volunteers including Judy Hackney, Jane Walmsley, Devdan Sen, Tim Selvage and Zain Mahsir, and we welcomed excellent placement students from the University of East Anglia such as Martha Gurney, Ebinipere Fegha, Arushi Dutt and many more.
Our Donors
Our donors and supporters since 1992 have been many, and we thank each and every one for their support and trust. We also thank the many organizations and individuals who have made donations in kind, time, solidarity and money.