You have a really noble idea and I loved reading through your entry. I think it would be great if you could elaborate a bit more on specific strategies you are using to help other organizations involve youth with disabilities into their programing.
The strategies we use to help other organizations are fully dependent on their characteristics, working method and structure. We find it of critical importance that we help them setting up a project for persons with disabilities that fits within their organization. Firstly, because by doing so the projects are more likely to sustain well. Secondly, these organizations understand the cultural context in which they work better than we do since they have been successfully working in the environment for several years. Therefore, they are the ones knowing what works best and what does not. Our role is more to assist them with knowledge and strategies to include persons with disabilities within their organizations (at practical and policy level).
To give you some example: MYSA (Kenya) works with a very efficient network of volunteers. We selected some of them who had interest in working with people with disabilities (some of them having disabilities themselves). We brought them together with some teachers in special education and educated them during a one week course. Theoretical and practical sessions were used to teach them about sport for persons with disabilities and how one can organize and prepare sport activities. We made sure that we assisted the group of volunteers during the first activities after which we gave feed-back on how to improve. In the meantime we assisted MYSA in finding relevant local partners with experience in disability (e.g. Special Olympics Kenya, Handicap International Kenya etc…). When time passed, we made sure that the best volunteers and the experienced teachers/partners replaced us so that the group of volunteers was able to continue the activities on their own.
Hopefully we gave you a bit of an insight in some of the strategies we are using. If you would like to know more, you are more than welcome to ask us any other questions.
Comme vous pouvez l'apercevoir sur notre candidature, APAID est une organisation établie en France. En effet, nous (Steffi de Jong et Pierre Bataille; 23 ans) opérons depuis le Nord de la France. Bien que la vidéo présentée ci-dessus soit en français, nous désirons vous faire partager plus d’informations dans la langue de Molière sur le site internet de l’organisme (www.apaid.org). Nous avons rempli cette candidature en anglais afin de pouvoir faire partager nos projets au plus grand nombre de personne possible. Vous pouvez également déposer vos commentaires en anglais ou en français et nous nous ferons un plaisir de vous répondre pertinemment.
Merci Sylvain de ton soutien. Surtout n'hésite pas à faire la promotion de notre candidature et de convaincre de voter pour APAID auprès de tous tes contacts, cela nous ferait très plaisir.
First of all, I am really impressed by your entry! I think it is really good that you try to combine projects with with research, so you will exactly know how hugh the impact is.
There is only one question coming up in my mind when reading your entry. How do you select volunteers and what kind of training do you give them? Do you also test the effect of such education on volunteers, or the effect of the project itself?
Rest me to say; keep on going....the award will come soon!!
First of all, thank you for your reaction. Regarding your first question, we think it is necessary to precise that we have two main types of volunteers: Research and project volunteers.
Research volunteers are either local or international university students. They are selected on their motivation, research capacities and area of expertise. They are mainly trained by their universities so APAID do not have any direct impact on their education although the experience they get while evaluating APAID’s project contributes certainly to the expansion of their skills.
For project volunteers, motivation and dedication are the main recruitment criteria because these two aspects are crucial factors for project success and sustainability. We recruit them mainly through community awareness campaign informing that an organization is about to start a new project on the theme of disability and is looking for volunteers. In each of our groups of volunteers we try to include persons with disabilities from the communities for the reason that they are the one experiencing the local socio- cultural context in their day- to- day life. Therefore, they are precious for the projects.
As soon as the volunteers are recruited, they follow APAID’s capacity building program. The concept is the following: Volunteers follow a one-week course on general disability issues and adapted sports specific information. This course include theoretical session in which they learn about disability models, rights for people with disabilities, rules of certain sports, etc. and practical session in which they participate in a certain sport, need to prepare a training, conduct a training, etc.
We evaluate our education by asking written feedbacks on daily basis and an end-evaluation from the participants. For the next courses we also intend to use pre-post data collection on attitudes toward people with disabilities.
Thanks for the comment and we hope that through our dedication and hard work we will indeed make it to the finals!
Thank you for the broad answer! I'm looking forward to the pre-post results of the evaluation of the education for volunteers. I think that will make more sence than just a written feedback. Again my congratulations for you professional way of working!
I think this is a great project given its projected impact both in terms of attitude and value addition for the volunteers and the people with disability involved and the general kenyan populace. As a person following the project very keenly on the ground i would like to say that so far the volunteers are very positive and committed to the project and the project is realising some of its objectives like attitude change towards the people with disability through personal involvement in the project and the community awareness events.
However something which worries me most is the possible lax in the volunteers committment and therefore the maintainance of the volunteers committment,and on this i would like to know what strategies you have put in place or you are thinking of using inorder to maintain the volunteers committment in the project as a stop-gap measure.
There is also a need to sensitice some special school administrators who are kind of conservative in terms of refusing to embrace new ideas like accepting to participate in recreation sports days,i wonder whether you are thinking about ways of making them realise the importance of the project to the kids with disabilities in their schools.
Otherwise kudos! for the noble idea and the good work done so far,all the best in the project.
----------
MOSES
Dear Moses,
First of all, thanks for the comment, it is always great to receive support from people and especially from the persons that follow our projects on the field! As you say, commitment of volunteers is really a key point in the success of a project. Therefore, we try to give challenges and good care in order to prevent boredom. To this end, we have several strategies. First of all, we integrate every year new volunteers in the project team since you can never ensure that 100% of the volunteers will stay (e.g. if they get higher time consuming job and therefore do not have time to volunteer in the project). Also, volunteers in our projects can have very diversified tasks. Therefore, the weariness of one activity can be replaced by taking a challenge and responsibilities in another activity (e.g. if a volunteers is a sport activity leader and become a community information responsible). Further, with the collaboration of our local partner and local sport and disability organization (e.g. Handicap International, Special Olympics), we have agreed that the volunteers showing great involvement and motivation would integrate some courses (e.g. coaching course) and clinics organized by this local organizations. So by showing their dedication, the volunteers can be awarded with further education and therefore contribute to the development of their skills. Moreover, volunteers are involved in a point system which means that more you volunteer more points you get. At the end of the year, the best volunteers have the opportunities to win scholarships.
The second issue you are addressing is very problematic and we know, by experience, what you mean since we have faced this problem before. Resistance from some administrators is really a barrier. Some of them refuse external help form NGOs for the reason that they do not want to be assisted. This is very unfortunate because the direct beneficiaries, the children with disabilities, are the victims of such situation. Our primary concern is that without the consent of administrator, the activity becomes outlaw. One solution is to bring the administrators on the field and showing them concretely the benefits of our projects for the children. Another possibility is mediation since bribes are totally against our philosophy. The strategy is then to sit and meet people to find compromises or to give good arguments to convince these administrators to collaborate in such projects for the good of persons with disabilities. In every society, there is a system that sometimes brings obstacles and our job is also to find solution to overcome these barriers.
We hope that our reply answers your question and if you have any other, please feel free to ask!
Steffi de Jong and Pierre Bataille
I want to sent a note of support and congratulations with regards to your Changemakers application and the work you are doing in building APAID. Truly, you are developing a program that is directly serving a need that is increasingly prominent in Africa - that is - providing opportunities for sport and play for people with disabilities. As a Paralympic athlete myself, and as an individual who very much supports sport for development, I understand the need for every individual, regardless of "disabled" or "able-bodied' status, to have opportunities for physical activity. That you have taken steps to make this happen in such an underserved region of the world is very impressive.
I also want to specifically note the structure of your programs and the importance of community education and awareness-raising that you have built into your program plans. Indeed - you truly understand that to decrease stigma surrounding disability, we must not only empower the individual, but also teach his/her community that disability is simply another way of living, not something to be pitied or looked down upon.
I look forward very much to working with you next year to develop the program with The Kids League Uganda and to work toward providing the world some evidence of the impact of these programs!
Thank you so much for your positive comment and support. We hope that we can continue to make more and more people aware of the need and importance of sport opportunities for people with disabilities! The research we will do with you in Uganda will hopefully contribute to that end.
With this project, you contribute to the improvement of our world, especially for those who need most attention and care! APAID will be in the furure a strong advocate for the quality of life of ALL through an active life. Changing attitudes, providing opportunities, building networks, empowering persons with disabilities as well as their community members in developing countries is a great challenge, it responds to a vital NEED. I wish you the success you deserve!
Thank you for this encouraging message! We hope, want and belive that we can become "a strong advocate for the quality of life of ALL through an active life" as you say it. We will definitely give everything we can to reach this goal and with the help of others (including you!!!) it will be possible! Thank you for everything you do for us!
Dear dedicated Pierre and Steffi,
I have been following your work for quite a while now and I simply know that you have the educational skills, the network and most important the true spirit to be the changemaker in many lives. Like I already told you, I would be honoured to support you with doing anthropological research during my bachelorthesis. Believe in yourself and keep your hopes high..
Comentarios
Hi Pierre and Steffi,
You have a really noble idea and I loved reading through your entry. I think it would be great if you could elaborate a bit more on specific strategies you are using to help other organizations involve youth with disabilities into their programing.
Good luck!
Romina Laouri
Ashoka's Youth Venture
Hi Romina,
Thank you for reacting on our entry.
The strategies we use to help other organizations are fully dependent on their characteristics, working method and structure. We find it of critical importance that we help them setting up a project for persons with disabilities that fits within their organization. Firstly, because by doing so the projects are more likely to sustain well. Secondly, these organizations understand the cultural context in which they work better than we do since they have been successfully working in the environment for several years. Therefore, they are the ones knowing what works best and what does not. Our role is more to assist them with knowledge and strategies to include persons with disabilities within their organizations (at practical and policy level).
To give you some example: MYSA (Kenya) works with a very efficient network of volunteers. We selected some of them who had interest in working with people with disabilities (some of them having disabilities themselves). We brought them together with some teachers in special education and educated them during a one week course. Theoretical and practical sessions were used to teach them about sport for persons with disabilities and how one can organize and prepare sport activities. We made sure that we assisted the group of volunteers during the first activities after which we gave feed-back on how to improve. In the meantime we assisted MYSA in finding relevant local partners with experience in disability (e.g. Special Olympics Kenya, Handicap International Kenya etc…). When time passed, we made sure that the best volunteers and the experienced teachers/partners replaced us so that the group of volunteers was able to continue the activities on their own.
Hopefully we gave you a bit of an insight in some of the strategies we are using. If you would like to know more, you are more than welcome to ask us any other questions.
Regards,
Pierre and Steffi
Great reply. I think you need to try to incorporate this in your entry!
Comme vous pouvez l'apercevoir sur notre candidature, APAID est une organisation établie en France. En effet, nous (Steffi de Jong et Pierre Bataille; 23 ans) opérons depuis le Nord de la France. Bien que la vidéo présentée ci-dessus soit en français, nous désirons vous faire partager plus d’informations dans la langue de Molière sur le site internet de l’organisme (www.apaid.org). Nous avons rempli cette candidature en anglais afin de pouvoir faire partager nos projets au plus grand nombre de personne possible. Vous pouvez également déposer vos commentaires en anglais ou en français et nous nous ferons un plaisir de vous répondre pertinemment.
Cordialement,
Pierre Bataille et Steffi de Jong
Je vote pour vous :)
Sylvain
----------
www.bernard.fr
Merci Sylvain de ton soutien. Surtout n'hésite pas à faire la promotion de notre candidature et de convaincre de voter pour APAID auprès de tous tes contacts, cela nous ferait très plaisir.
Merci encore.
Cordialement,
Pierre et Steffi
Hi Pierre and Steffi,
First of all, I am really impressed by your entry! I think it is really good that you try to combine projects with with research, so you will exactly know how hugh the impact is.
There is only one question coming up in my mind when reading your entry. How do you select volunteers and what kind of training do you give them? Do you also test the effect of such education on volunteers, or the effect of the project itself?
Rest me to say; keep on going....the award will come soon!!
Kind regards,
Rinske van Dijk
KU Leuven, Belgium
Dear Mrs. van Dijk,
First of all, thank you for your reaction. Regarding your first question, we think it is necessary to precise that we have two main types of volunteers: Research and project volunteers.
Research volunteers are either local or international university students. They are selected on their motivation, research capacities and area of expertise. They are mainly trained by their universities so APAID do not have any direct impact on their education although the experience they get while evaluating APAID’s project contributes certainly to the expansion of their skills.
For project volunteers, motivation and dedication are the main recruitment criteria because these two aspects are crucial factors for project success and sustainability. We recruit them mainly through community awareness campaign informing that an organization is about to start a new project on the theme of disability and is looking for volunteers. In each of our groups of volunteers we try to include persons with disabilities from the communities for the reason that they are the one experiencing the local socio- cultural context in their day- to- day life. Therefore, they are precious for the projects.
As soon as the volunteers are recruited, they follow APAID’s capacity building program. The concept is the following: Volunteers follow a one-week course on general disability issues and adapted sports specific information. This course include theoretical session in which they learn about disability models, rights for people with disabilities, rules of certain sports, etc. and practical session in which they participate in a certain sport, need to prepare a training, conduct a training, etc.
We evaluate our education by asking written feedbacks on daily basis and an end-evaluation from the participants. For the next courses we also intend to use pre-post data collection on attitudes toward people with disabilities.
Thanks for the comment and we hope that through our dedication and hard work we will indeed make it to the finals!
Pierre and Steffi
Dear Pierre and Steffi,
Thank you for the broad answer! I'm looking forward to the pre-post results of the evaluation of the education for volunteers. I think that will make more sence than just a written feedback. Again my congratulations for you professional way of working!
Kind regards,
Rinske van Dijk
I think this is a great project given its projected impact both in terms of attitude and value addition for the volunteers and the people with disability involved and the general kenyan populace. As a person following the project very keenly on the ground i would like to say that so far the volunteers are very positive and committed to the project and the project is realising some of its objectives like attitude change towards the people with disability through personal involvement in the project and the community awareness events.
However something which worries me most is the possible lax in the volunteers committment and therefore the maintainance of the volunteers committment,and on this i would like to know what strategies you have put in place or you are thinking of using inorder to maintain the volunteers committment in the project as a stop-gap measure.
There is also a need to sensitice some special school administrators who are kind of conservative in terms of refusing to embrace new ideas like accepting to participate in recreation sports days,i wonder whether you are thinking about ways of making them realise the importance of the project to the kids with disabilities in their schools.
Otherwise kudos! for the noble idea and the good work done so far,all the best in the project.
----------
MOSES
Dear Moses,
First of all, thanks for the comment, it is always great to receive support from people and especially from the persons that follow our projects on the field! As you say, commitment of volunteers is really a key point in the success of a project. Therefore, we try to give challenges and good care in order to prevent boredom. To this end, we have several strategies. First of all, we integrate every year new volunteers in the project team since you can never ensure that 100% of the volunteers will stay (e.g. if they get higher time consuming job and therefore do not have time to volunteer in the project). Also, volunteers in our projects can have very diversified tasks. Therefore, the weariness of one activity can be replaced by taking a challenge and responsibilities in another activity (e.g. if a volunteers is a sport activity leader and become a community information responsible). Further, with the collaboration of our local partner and local sport and disability organization (e.g. Handicap International, Special Olympics), we have agreed that the volunteers showing great involvement and motivation would integrate some courses (e.g. coaching course) and clinics organized by this local organizations. So by showing their dedication, the volunteers can be awarded with further education and therefore contribute to the development of their skills. Moreover, volunteers are involved in a point system which means that more you volunteer more points you get. At the end of the year, the best volunteers have the opportunities to win scholarships.
The second issue you are addressing is very problematic and we know, by experience, what you mean since we have faced this problem before. Resistance from some administrators is really a barrier. Some of them refuse external help form NGOs for the reason that they do not want to be assisted. This is very unfortunate because the direct beneficiaries, the children with disabilities, are the victims of such situation. Our primary concern is that without the consent of administrator, the activity becomes outlaw. One solution is to bring the administrators on the field and showing them concretely the benefits of our projects for the children. Another possibility is mediation since bribes are totally against our philosophy. The strategy is then to sit and meet people to find compromises or to give good arguments to convince these administrators to collaborate in such projects for the good of persons with disabilities. In every society, there is a system that sometimes brings obstacles and our job is also to find solution to overcome these barriers.
We hope that our reply answers your question and if you have any other, please feel free to ask!
Steffi de Jong and Pierre Bataille
Dear Steffi and Pierre -
I want to sent a note of support and congratulations with regards to your Changemakers application and the work you are doing in building APAID. Truly, you are developing a program that is directly serving a need that is increasingly prominent in Africa - that is - providing opportunities for sport and play for people with disabilities. As a Paralympic athlete myself, and as an individual who very much supports sport for development, I understand the need for every individual, regardless of "disabled" or "able-bodied' status, to have opportunities for physical activity. That you have taken steps to make this happen in such an underserved region of the world is very impressive.
I also want to specifically note the structure of your programs and the importance of community education and awareness-raising that you have built into your program plans. Indeed - you truly understand that to decrease stigma surrounding disability, we must not only empower the individual, but also teach his/her community that disability is simply another way of living, not something to be pitied or looked down upon.
I look forward very much to working with you next year to develop the program with The Kids League Uganda and to work toward providing the world some evidence of the impact of these programs!
My Best,
Cheri Blauwet
www.cheriblauwet.com
Dear Cheri,
Thank you so much for your positive comment and support. We hope that we can continue to make more and more people aware of the need and importance of sport opportunities for people with disabilities! The research we will do with you in Uganda will hopefully contribute to that end.
All the best,
Pierre and Steffi
With this project, you contribute to the improvement of our world, especially for those who need most attention and care! APAID will be in the furure a strong advocate for the quality of life of ALL through an active life. Changing attitudes, providing opportunities, building networks, empowering persons with disabilities as well as their community members in developing countries is a great challenge, it responds to a vital NEED. I wish you the success you deserve!
Dear Claire,
Thank you for this encouraging message! We hope, want and belive that we can become "a strong advocate for the quality of life of ALL through an active life" as you say it. We will definitely give everything we can to reach this goal and with the help of others (including you!!!) it will be possible! Thank you for everything you do for us!
Pierre and Steffi
Dear dedicated Pierre and Steffi,
I have been following your work for quite a while now and I simply know that you have the educational skills, the network and most important the true spirit to be the changemaker in many lives. Like I already told you, I would be honoured to support you with doing anthropological research during my bachelorthesis. Believe in yourself and keep your hopes high..
kind regard
Loes Berkhout
University Utrecht
The Netherlands
These names look familiar! Great project guys, great to see your project posted on this competition too!
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Tyler Ahn
Changemakers
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