Key issues : Cultural issues : Development, Cultural Values and Disability: The Example of Afghanistan

A large CBR programme in Afghanistan

from Development, Cultural Values and Disability: The Example of Afghanistan by Peter Coleridge

The Comprehensive Disabled Afghans' Programme (CDAP) was set up by UNDP and UNOPS in 1995 to address the needs of disabled people inside Afghanistan. It has developed into a national CBR programme operating in thirteen provinces of the country employing some four hundred paid staff, several hundred volunteers, and serving about 25,000 disabled people annually. All the staff are Afghan with the exception of one expatriate programme manager.

The key agents in the field are Mid-Level Rehabilitation Workers (MLRWs), male and female. They each cover a population of between 15-30,000. Their role is to activate local CBR committees (CBRCs) and DPOs (Disabled Peoples' Organisations), recruit volunteers, identify disabled people in their area through a local survey, and then arrange the appropriate service for each disabled person. For example, disabled children need to be integrated into schools (where they exist), disabled adults need job skill training and loans to set up small businesses, families need to be enabled to help their disabled child to develop, some will need referral to a physiotherapy centre, and others will need a prosthesis or orthosis from an orthopaedic workshop. The MLRW arranges what is needed by referrals to appropriate services and by mobilising local resources. The MLRWs are given a general training of five months spread over a year in topics such as community development, psychology, child development, teaching and learning, and CBR principles, as well as how to work with specific impairments.

The MLRWs are supported in their work by a smaller group of specialists: physiotherapists, orthopaedic technicians, employment support specialists, special education resource persons, CBR supervisors, trainers, and a resource centre. The total number of paid staff in one project area may reach 90, half of whom are MLRWs. In addition each MLRW is expected to recruit up to five volunteers each. Other important aspects of the programme are:

1. An Information, Education and Communication (IEC) component, which aims to raise disability issues both within Afghanistan and in the aid community outside it in Pakistan and beyond through newsletters, radio broadcasts, posters, videos, leaflets, and discussions. For example, CDAP organises regular national workshops on disability in Afghanistan for which it brings together about thirty agencies.
2. A budget from which it can fund other agencies working in disability. Through this mechanism it gains a much wider picture of what is going on in the field of disability in Afghanistan than it would through its own programme alone.
3. Under a new UNDP integrated programme CDAP has now started to target vulnerable people other than disabled people, in particular widows and orphans.

How far can this programme connect with local communities in a way which respects their values but also acts as a catalyst for change? In order to answer this question it is necessary to identify some of the cultural values in Afghanistan which have a direct bearing on development work in general and disability in particular.

Key issues : Cultural issues : Development, Cultural Values and Disability: The Example of Afghanistan

14/07/1999