(2019) Yeamlak is 8 years old and deaf. Bisrat, her father, travels 20km to school with her by bus every day and stays until school is over. The school operates a shift system to cater for over 4,000 children and is the first school in Adama to have special needs education and teachers, supplemented by […]
Cantol Pondja is President and Coordinator of AJODEMO, the national Mozambique disabled youth association. Cantol gets around using callipers and crutches, having contracted polio in childhood. He is an inspiring role-model and an untiring advocate for disabled people in Mozambique. The video profile below is from the YouTube channel of Abilis Foundation in Finland. https://youtu.be/zx6PUVUrDDc
Sumitra was born with a club foot, but had corrective surgery at the age of ten, leaving her more confident and strong enough to handle physical work. The eldest of six siblings, Sumitra had to take responsibility for her family at a tender age. Today, as part of our Women-Led Disability-Inclusive Livelihood project (WDIL) with […]
Ntahorutari Samson fled to DRC with his mother and his sister when conflict intensified in Burundi in 1972. With his stepfather killed and conflicts erupting all over the Congo, he and his family crossed over to Tanzania. His mother’s mental health was failing and Samson organized repatriation papers to admit her to a mental hospital […]
Luisa belongs to a group selling telephone credits in Nhamatanda, Mozambique, established through our partner AJODEMO’s Disability Rights and Enterprise Training programme. Luisa has been disabled since a childhood accident, but never received any kind of assistive device, so she has always made do with a sturdy stick carved from a branch. Luisa, along with […]
Melaku was one of 8 deaf teaching assistants involved in our project on Improving education for deaf and hard of hearing children with DDIA in Ethiopia. When he started working at Adama School, there were no special educational needs (SEN) teachers or resources. Melaku worked with the school director Teshane to refurbish the disused library […]
Rahel and her husband Anteneh run a café near the busy Piassa area of Addis Ababa, set up through our project with DDIA on Improving income for deaf people. Previously they had set up a cybercafé, but demand plummeted due to the advent of smartphones. Undeterred, they attended training Along with other deaf people and […]
Matrika, himself a mental health patient, was not diagnosed until the age of 25, and it took another four years fully recover. He then chose to talk about his own experiences to de-stigmatise attitudes towards mental health in Nepal, and very quickly became a respected advocate speaking on national TV channels across Nepal. Matrika founded […]