General Report

Project name: Sustainable community based skills Initiative for persons affected by disabilities.

Project objective: To increase the productivity and resiliency of Persons affected by disabilities in particular young people, including their parents.

Impact Outcome 1

Refugee youth with disabilities and their parents will be productive and contribute to their own livelihood and society by end of 2023.

Immediate Outcome 2: Refugee youth with disabilities and their parents able to take lead in initiatives on sustainable community based innovative solutions (making local school bags, re-usable sanitary pads and Bed sheet and table cloth, repairing of devices)

Output 1: Skill development center established to promote community based innovative solutions.

Number of damaged devices repaired.

Number of re-usable sanitary pads produced and distributed to target beneficiaries.

Number of school bags produced and distributed to target beneficiaries.

Number of trainees successfully graduating from vocational skills training.

YETA’s response

There was need to create a skills development center for skills and business as a necessary sustainable response strategy, to enable persons with disabilities and those who care for one or two to participate in and contribute to their own livelihoods and societies.

The proposed skills development, included tailoring and handcrafts which would be suited to address the immediate need for innovation and income generation, helping vulnerable persons with disabilities to survive, such as providing caregivers/parents with an opportunity for self-sufficiency.

Output 1:1.  46 individuals benefit from the training skills (Tailoring and Bed sheet, table cloth making).

Base Line and needs Assessment

Table below shows the summary of the data analysis.

 Roll out of Instant skills training

Marketable Instant Skills

43 (40 female, 3 male) caretakers/parents of children with disabilities successfully graduated from 3 months (Sept-Nov 2023) tailoring training. This was achieved through establishment of one community skills development center in zone 1 which was equipped with 6 tailoring machines for training. The funds also supported the physical improvements of the center such as plaster finishing’s at windows, walls and doors. Hiring of an experienced life skills trainers who are refugees largely contributed to the success of the training because of the local languages used during the training that made knowledge transfer and learning easily as the participants were largely illiterate.

Output 1:2. : 20 broken or outgrown devices are repaired for use to increase mobility of children with disabilities.

Base Line and needs Assessment

Based on the assessment above, YETA was able to; procure spare parts and materials for repair of the assessed assistive devices.

As a result 20 devices were repaired.  This included Cerebral Palsy chairs, wheel chairs, adopted chairs from 17 participants. 5 female, 12 male.

1. Tailored Solutions to Local Challenges through caregiver support groups: Women and young women-led groups purely comprising of caregivers of children with disabilities possess intimate knowledge of the specific challenges and needs they and their children face. Their first hand experiences enables them to design and implement projects that are contextually relevant, and directly address pressing issues such as education, healthcare, livelihoods, clothing and social integration. This was witnessed when women and young women trained on tailoring in solidarity wrote business idea as mothers of children with disabilities and easily got supported to solve their own challenges.

2. One time general repair of devices does not give opportunity for immediate support. Our experience was that when we repaired the devices once, we found out that some of the children had already being negatively impacted for example not going to school for a whole school learning term and social interactions. Going forward the devices should be repaired from time to time as the cases are identified, reported and or referred so that immediate support is given.

3. Transition of some school going children with disabilities from primary to secondary is becoming challenging due to distant secondary schools. Scholarships for boarding school would make the dreams of children with disabilities come true. 

Recommendations

Scale up of the project. During the graduation of tailoring trainees, OPM and UNHCR strongly appealed for scale up of the project to another zone and recommended for use of existing structures as training centres. The stakeholders appreciated the project design as the best sustainable strategy of supporting children with disabilities where their basic education, health, livelihood, clothing can be met by the parents themselves (Reference documentary).

Provision of start-up package for trainees. To realize meaningful impact, there is need to equip trainees with start-up package either individually or group. OPM strongly emphasised the same during the graduation.

Conclusion

With the prioritization of general food assistance by WFP for refugees, this project proved to be very relevant by targeting persons affected by disabilities as some of them have been laid off from the food assistance exacerbating their already existing challenges. Scale up of this project to include actual livelihood activities like farming would really positively impact the lives of persons affected by disabilities.