DDP project partners are committed and passionate organizations working with and for disabled people.
Each partner is unique in what they know and understand of disabled people and vulnerable groups, their needs and challenges. We support our partners by developing programmes together, finding the funding and by helping to put in place sound management, monitoring and financial systems, all of which strengthens the sense of ownership.
Partners are the lynchpin of DDP because without them we will not exist. We have worked with 22 partners, and our current partnerships are in Burundi, Ethiopia, India, Mozambique, Nepal and in the UK. Past partnerships have taken us to Angola, Bangladesh, and Cape Verde.
Partnership is a two-way and evolving process that brings with it mutual responsibilities and learning opportunities. Our partners share with us their particular circumstances and the problems they want to tackle, while we bring more than 20 years’ experience to supporting these aspirations.
ACPDH Burundi
ACPDH is a community-based human rights association dedicated to the promotion and protection of universal human rights. They provide advice and support to people that have faced discrimination, injustice and displacement. DDP supported ACPDH to develop a sustainable livelihoods and reintegration project for returnees/former refugees which won the 2015 Ockenden International Prize. The political situation […]
AJODEMO
Associação dos Jovens Deficientes de Moçambique, the national disabled youth association, has more than 2,000 members throughout Mozambique’s 11 provinces. AJODEMO is only too aware that disabled young people are often marginalised and denied the opportunities in education and employment that are so important to their life chances. AJODEMO is advocating for better services for disabled […]
Berhan Lehetsanat
Berhan Lehetsanat (‘Light for Children’) is an Ethiopian NGO based in Addis Ababa, and a DDP partner since 2003. Their work is primarily with disabled children and focuses on education, health and livelihoods using a community-based development approach. BL’s work enhances the lives of disabled children, deprived and marginalized children, girls, youth, women and parents of […]
Deaf Development and Information Association
DDIA is a deaf-led national NGO that aims to improve the lives of young deaf people through skills and enterprise training and support. DDP has worked with DDIA on three livelihood initiatives since 2014, the most recent of which has been a 3-year project to enable deaf and hard of hearing (HoH) young adults to […]
Disabled Human Rights Centre, Nepal
DHRC is a national disabled people’s organization formed in 2000 to promote the rights of all disabled people: political, social, legal and economic. Our partnership began in 2007 with a 5-year Advocacy for Change project, raising awareness and generating evidence to ensure that Nepal’s new constitution included disabled people’s rights in accordance with the UN […]
GMSP
Gramin Mahila Srijansil Pariwar (GMSP) is a women-led and women-focused NGO founded in Nepal’s Sindhupalchowk District in 1993. Their objective is to prevent the trafficking of women and girls. They also work to build awareness and prevention of gender-based violence and on the promotion of development programmes for women. Since we were introduced by DHRC, […]
Koshish
KOSHISH means ‘making an effort’, and is the first mental health self-help organization in Nepal fighting to improve mental health policy, quality of care, and to challenge prejudice and discrimination suffered by people affected by mental illness. Matrika Devkota, founder of KOSHISH and a leading advocate on mental health issues, says that one of the […]
SHRUTI
In the 21st century, countries such as Nepal still lack basic requirements in education, employment and technology to empower their people and ensure equal participation. SHRUTI (National Association of the Hard of Hearing and Deafened, Nepal) is a pioneering organization focused on addressing the issues of HoH and Deafened people all over the country, raising […]
Social Development and Education Trust
The Social Development and Education Trust (SDET), based in Virudhunagar District in Tamil Nadu, provides academic and vocational education for children with special educational needs resulting from learning and physical disabilities. They have their own resource centre and residential facilities adapted to the needs of children they teach. SDET uses monthly Parents’ Committee meetings to […]
People
Agnishikha
“I am one of the first IT trainees at SHRUTI. I have always loved computers and editing photos as a hobby. I had some basic IT knowledge, as I took a computer course at high school. But I didn’t understand very well at the time. Thanks to this training I have a lot more knowledge […]
Ambika and Ram Prasad
Ambika’s husband Ram Prasad became unwell over a decade ago, and has been unable to work ever since. Ambika cannot bring herself to recall those terrible days. She had sole responsibility for their five children, and no-one to help; all she remembers is the feeling of loneliness and discrimination. When she heard of DHRC’s WDIL […]
Cantol
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
Fupu
Fupu took the IT training course for hard-of-hearing young people at SHRUTI in Kathmandu, and aims to continue in web design.
Gunaraj and Govinda
Gunaraj Khatiwada and Govinda Khanal both had polio in childhood, which affected their physical mobility. There were no rehabilitation centres nearby, or hospitals to provide timely operations and callipers. Govinda used to crawl to school, once he was too big for his mother to carry. And he recalls the heart-stopping moments for his mother when […]
Jagadish
Journalist, DPO leader and co-founder of the Nepal Disabled Human Rights Centre.
Luisa
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 […]
Matrika
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 […]
Melaku
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 […]
Neeta
President of SHRUTI, Neeta is a DPO leader, campaigner and researcher working for the inclusion of people with hearing loss.
Nor Bahadur
Nor Bahadur is a charming, gregarious person, of restricted growth, happily married to Tanka with whom he has a young son. Life was hard when Bahadur was growing up: as one of four brothers in a rural family, he was expected to pull more weight than was physically possible, and he felt that he was […]
Rahel
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 […]
Raju
Active community mobilizer in Nepal supporting many other disabled people into self-help groups and livelihood activities.
Samson
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 […]
Shudarson
Shudarson is a lawyer and an indefatigable disability rights campaigner in Nepal.
Sumitra
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 […]
Yeamlak and Bisrat
(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 […]