The newsletter

The newsletter is designed to tell our partners in Ghana, Uganda, Nicaragua and Honduras about our work - in Denmark and also abroad. In the newsletter you will find more information about the challenges DHF faces in Denmark and up-dates on the projects.
We would also like to encourage our partners in Ghana, Uganda, Nicaragua and Honduras to contribute with articles, developing this newsletter from being only information from Denmark to becoming an opportunity for all our partners to network and share experience. If you would like to add something to the newsletter, then please forward it to uland@dhf-net.dk. In this edition we feature an article from our partner in Honduras.

The newsletter will be published 4 times a year.

- DENMARK

Summertime

In Denmark a very nice summer will soon be over. Work is very quiet during the summer, so the good news is, that we now are starting up again and everybody has got new energy.

Disability Convention

Denmark has finally ratified the Disability Convention in July this summer. It is disappointing though, that the Danish government don't have intensions of signing the protocol too. With the protocol signed we would have the possibility to complain about violations of the Convention, and now many fear that the government won't respect it anyway.

Marching for accessibility

In June the Swedish disability organisations arranged a march for accessibility in the 25 biggest cities, with a great number of participants. The message is, that inaccessibility is discriminating. According to one of Swedens biggest newspapers (Dagens Nyheter 14/6-09), 60-90% of all shops, restaurants and meeting rooms are inaccessible.

Cycling for accessibility

A young man with Multiple Sclerosis, Jens Holst, has been going from one end of Denmark to the other in his wheelchair, to get attention on accessibility. In each town he enters, people can give him photographs of inaccessible places in their town, like hospitals, townhalls and other important public places. He will bring it all to our capital Copenhagen and give it to a member of the Danish parliament.

Margarita from Honduras

In the last issue of our member magazine, Handicap-Nyt, we wrote an article about Margarita from Honduras. She broke her back as a young girl and was afterwards so embarrassed of her disability, that she didn't leave her home at all, until she turned 22. After an even darker period with the death of her father and drug abuse, Margarita started on an education, with the help of her neighbour. Now Margarita is studying law at the university and is working for Ahmlys, an organisation for PWDs, that DHF is co-working with. As you can read later in this newsletter, Honduras has got problems with the national politics, but we hope it will not ruin the program.

- UGANDA

Troels Hovgaard who was a development worker first in UNAPD from 1st of December 2007 to 30th of September 2008 and there after worked as a liaison officer for a number of disability organisation in Uganda has ended his terms in July. Troels has made a big impact in the development of both UNAPD but also a number of other organisations. DHF will together with other Danish DPOs investigate the possibility of placing a new development worker in Uganda as a joint resource for a number of Uganda DPOs.

DHF has together with two local consultants and DHFs own staff made an evaluation of UNAPD on both national and local level. The process, which has been ongoing for nearly 4 months, ended with a numbers of meetings and partnership activities in the beginning of July where both representatives from staff and board in DHF participated together with Birgit from DBIA. The outcome of the evaluation and partnership activities is a partnership agreement between UNAPD and an alliance of Danish organisations (DHF and DBIA) that will be ready for signing in September. It is the plan that UNAPD together with the Danish alliance will formulate application for a new joint project in October or January.

- GHANA

In June, one project coordinator from DHF, the joint project coordinator and one colleague from Danish Association of the Blind went to Ghana to prepare the next phase of the joint cooperation between 4 disability organisations in Ghana.

The main areas of intervention will be within advocacy, organisational development, and communication and coordination. During the 4 years of the project implementation 16 districts all over Ghana will be involved and training of local branches will hopefully pave the way for improved livelihoods of the disabled in the districts. The aim is, among other issues, to lobby the District Assemblies to allocate funds for projects for disabled people. During the inception phase, dialogue between the local organisations and the local authorities have improved with great success raising the awareness of disability related issues among the local communities. It is the ambition in the next phase to adopt the successes to other districts.

The project will be implemented from January 2010 - December 2013 if approved by Danida ultimo 2009.

- NICARAGUA

All the seven partners of DHF in Nicaragua are fully engaged with the implementation of the various components of the large Danida funded UNIDAD project, which started up the first of January this year.

The association of disabled from the former Nicaraguan Resistance Movement (AD-RN) went through an evaluation process due to doubt about whether they could continue to be partners of the project. The evaluation was quite positive and it has been decided to continue the support at least until December 2010.

The association of the deaf has succeeded to include deaf students in the teacher education, and in 2010 it will be possible for young deaf students to join secondary school on five different schools. Until now it has only been possible in the Capital and one other city.

The small association of the blind from the city of Estelí, have during some years worked with the integration of blind persons in the labour market, and the results has been very good. Even now, during the economical crisis, the blind has succeeded to hold on to their jobs, even though many others have been fired. The companies are very satisfied with the blind workers because of their dedication. Recently, three more members of the association got a new job.

- HONDURAS

Because of the political crisis in the country the work of the organisations of PWDs have been slowed down. Many activities have had to be cancelled.
Never the less are they still working hard to implement the project. UNIDAD and the federation Fenopdih will in near future start a training unit for all members of their 12 member organisations.
The training unit called Cofode will offer the training principal to leaders and active members.

From Nicaragua DHF have good experiences with common training of the different organisations of PWDs. Apart from the training, the relations between the leaders of the different organisations are strengthened and sharing of experiences happens. The training will be in organisation, gender, personal development etc.

A local cross-disability organisation and the federation of organisations of parents with disabled children have recently become partners of the project in Honduras.

- PARTNER CONTRIBUTION: HONDURAS

Honduras since the 28 of June 2009

By Carmen Molina

After 30 years with democracy the history of Honduras changed the 28 of June 2009. This day the president had convened the population of Honduras to a referendum - a so called popular consult. This consult brought a lot of problems between the different powers of the state, because the aim of the referendum was to make reforms to the actual constitution.

Despite a strong political pressure and disobedience from the army the president continued the process with the referendum. It was 5.20 a.m. when a group of 200 soldiers arrested the president in his residence, and threw him out of the country and left him at the airport in Costa Rica.
The same day the army cut the electric energy in the most important cities, they closed the radio and television stations to prevent the population to be informed that a coup d'état had happen here in the XXI century. The same day a popular resistance movement was conformed against the coup and in more than a month it have been in the streets making a popular protest and claimed the return of the constitutionality to the country. The repression have been strong, there is a permanent curfew, beaten people in the streets, and inclusive at least three persons have been killed by the soldiers and the police.

The commissioner of the human rights have taken part of the side who did the coup, to that extent that he got expelled from the international federation of human rights.

The political crisis in the country affect in a direct way the associations of PWDs who on a monthly basis receive a grant from the government and till this date there have been no payment this year. It means that the associations do not have any public services because they cannot pay the bill. Others have their offices closed because they haven't paid the salaries to their employees.

Besides the services in the health sector are poor due to most workers unions from this area are on permanent strike claiming for the return of the legal president and the state of rights.

Kind Regards
DHF