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 Nicaragua.

The newsletter will be published 4 times a year.

- DHF today (the daily life of DHF)

Christmas

First of all, DHF would like to thank everyone for a good year. We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year. Feliz Navidad.

In Denmark we have a lot of traditions at Christmastime. It's very cold in the winter and the sun is only here for a short time every day. The shortest day of the year is December 22, with only 7 hours of daylight. So we have a lot of decorations with light, a lot of light bulbs and candles. Also we get together, to eat, drink and have fun. At every firm we celebrate with a Christmas lunch. And maybe, there will even be gifts for the employees, if it has been a good year. The main reason though, to meet at Christmas lunch, is to eat, drink and be together at a much more social manner, than usual. So we eat a lot of small dishes, with a lot of marinated heering (fish) and a lot of different kinds of meatdishes, all on dark bread. We drink strong and dark beer, and schnapps, an ice cold and very strong drink in small glasses.

Paralympics

In September, the Danish paralympic team of 39 athletes went to Beijing to participate in the Paralympics. They won 9 medals in 10 different sports. Among them was a team of blind goalballers who won a bronzemedal, an amputee who won gold in tabletennis and a spinal cord injured who won a gold medal in swimming. DHF congratulates.

- DHFs present key focus area

Congress

In October, DHF had it's 15th congress. It was held on the Egmont school and was a big success, with 122 participants. The theme was 'Equality for everyone', which broadly describes DHFs work for getting PWD equal opportunities in the Danish society.

At the congress there were six different workshops. The plan was to get the delegates to go to the workshops they care about most, and then discuss how to work the next 2-4 years forward. That created a lot of ideas. Some of them are listed here:

1) Social policy - DHF will work for:
- That PWD get more individualised treatment
- A just and equal compensation for your handicap, where ever you live in Denmark
- That everyone can get counselling on social policy issues

Many laws in Denmark, concerning PWD, are very new and incomplete. There's a big difference on how the implementation is being done. DHF want all PWD to have their rights fulfilled, less arbitrary than is the case now.

2) Part time jobs and spare jobs - DHF will work for:
- Change of attitude in society in generel, towards PWD.
- To remove barriers and ignorance towards PWD, in companies, other workers, jobcenters and PWD themselves.

Many PWD would like to work and the Danish society needs their labour. Still, many PWD does not get a job, because of lack of understanding for disabilities. DHF want to change that.

3) BPA (Citizencontrolled Personal Assistance) - DHF will work for:
- That PWD get the BPA they need
- Good counselling for persons with BPA
- That the personal assistants gets the best working conditions possible

In Denmark it's possible to get a personal assistant or helper (BPA), if you have a strong disability. But the law is still new and the helpers are not secured in unions and the like. The effect is that it's more difficult to employ helpers and DHF want to change that.

4) Accessibility - DHF will work for:
- Access to all clinics, doctors and dentist
- Less dispensations from the building regulations
- Access to nature
- Access to public transportation
- Access to schools and educational institutions
- More photo documentation of violations

Despite that Denmark has quite a good infrastructure, the accessibility for PWD is in a very bad condition. For one, there's a lot of old buildings and next, there's no real sanctions on violations made. The aim is to get a common understanding in society, on how great the problem is, and off course, to make better accessibility.

5) UN Convention - DHF will work for:
- That members and delegates knows about the convention
- Making a strategy based on the convention, to use in future policymaking

DHF see the UN Convention as a very important tool in order to secure the rights of PWD.

6) Getting more members - DHF will work for:
- More visibility in general and better communication inside DHF, and from DHF and out
- Making events and happenings that will create visibility

More organisations are coming up and the competition for media coverage and members is getting harder. So DHF will have to continuously increase the effort beeing made, to be noticed. Less visibility has an impact on the finansials and the economy of DHF is not good. Also, there has not been as many as usual, to donate their heritage to DHF.

There's a lot to do and DHF is happy about all the good suggestions.

- Partners

Uganda

UNAPD has since 2007 implemented a project with a main focus on accessibility. It was clear from the beginning that a systematic work with accessibility would be very demanding for UNAPD and include many aspects new to the organisation. To facilitate this work DPOD granted support from its Development Worker program so we could recruit an accessibility expert who could work for 7 weeks together with UNAPD. Ms. Rie Ollendorff, a Danish architect with experience in accessibility, took up the task and moved to Uganda in Nov-Dec 2008 to work with staff and volunteers from UNAPD. During the 7 weeks, her main task was to improve the accessibility standards already developed by UNAPD so they can be used by UNAPD as an important tool in lobby for better access for PWD. UNAPD has already gained a lot of experience in accessibility audit and advocacy targeting the national legislation on accessibility and the standards can in the future be used in this work.
The Standards still need some final adjustments but DHF hope that this work in the future can be used as inspiration in other countries in Africa.

Ghana

In November 2008, two members of the Youth Wing of DHF and the coordinator went to Ghana to visit the GSPD Youth Wing in 10 different regions. Among the visited projects, the Danish guests went to see a successful chicken farm managed by the local GSPD YW in Western Region. The project has run for 4 years and involves more than 150 disabled people in the community having approx. 600 chickens. In Denmark, the DHF YW members will now advocate for more young people to get involved in the development work and participate in the Youth Wing projects in development countries.

Nicaragua and Honduras

December 10th, Danida approved 22 million Danish kronor (about 4 million US$) to the Unidad project. It means we can start up projects in these two countries in January 2009. DHF will collaborate with 7 counterparts in Nicaragua and at least 4 in Honduras.
The projects will be managed from a DHF office in the capital of Nicaragua, but there will also be a small DHF office in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras.

Nicaragua

The movement of PWD in Nicaragua had a meeting with the president, Daniel Ortega. They gave Ortega a long list of indicators about living conditions of PWD and asked be part of the national development plan.
After some years with a very weak federation of the organizations of PWD, it has now gained strength. In April the federation - Feconori, held elections and a new board was elected. The federation is now functioning well, and coordinates the movement of PWD.

Honduras

With the end of 2008 the project Decadish also ended in Honduras. Decadish was the first project in Honduras, and had character of a pilot project.
The project has made good results. To mention one, the organization of psychical disabled, have grown from just one branch in 2006 to 7 branches today.

- Partner contribution - Uganda

In Uganda they march together

By Troels Hovgaard, Organisational Development Adviser (DHF)

On October 24, this year around 250 disability activists marched through the city of Kampala. A music band fronted the manifestation and banners waved along the long line of people supporting them selves with crutches or white canes. It looked peaceful and full of joy - and that was what it was. The reason for the march was a wish from the disability organisations in Uganda to thank the Government for having ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of PWD.

The procession stopped at the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development to meet with the Minister of state for Elderly and Disability, Hon. Sulaiman Madada. After this brief meeting with the line ministry for disability the procession continued to Parliament, where participants conveyed an appreciation message and handed over several copies of the Convention to the Speaker of Parliament and appealed for its domestication.

Many DPOs and a strong umbrella

Generally, in Uganda the relation between Government and DPOs is seen as being quite constructive and of such collaborative nature as the march indicates.

To understand how this has come about we need to have a quick look into the most recent history of the disability movement.

Some 21 years ago in Uganda, there were many smaller and locally based disability groups around the country and in addition two DPOs formed by the death and the blind. In 1987, 17 of the smaller groups in then formed NUDIPU (National Union of Disabled Persons of Uganda). This new umbrella structure grew quickly and in 1996, it had 75 affiliated groups.

The disability fraternity participated in the Constituency Assembly to draft the new 1995 Constitution, which ended into increasing space for representation of PWD in the National Parliament by 5 MPs as a special interest group. The five MPs quickly made an impact by influencing the Local Government Act 1997 whereby PWD were given direct political representation from village to district level. This resulted into over 45,000 PWD leaders joining the political decision-making governance structures.

This brought with it the need of training the PWD councillors but also to feed them with information and skills to influence the councils at various levels. Therefore NUDIPU had to decentralise to create strong district unions to meet the challenge.

Today it is these District Unions who in practice governs NUDIPU and it is also through NUDIPUs structure that the 5 MPs so far have been elected.

As derives from the above, being a disability activist in Uganda very often leads to being a politician given the number of political positions created.

Politics is entering the scene

One thing is to have political representation at all levels; another thing is to have the capacity to understand the 'political game' and to actually influence the agenda. Since so many people are involved it goes without saying that, the capacity-building task is still very demanding.

Another challenge arose when Uganda in 2005 adopted a multiparty political system. The current political representation was developed under the so-called Movement system lead by president Yoweri Museveni. It might be difficult to find somebody from the disability fraternity to openly say that disabled persons should stay loyal to the current government. It is never the less not difficult to find people from within claiming that the disability fraternity is de facto supporting the current government far too much and in fact suppressing people who are understood to support any opposition party - so yes, politics have entered the disability scene.

NUDIPU is opening the doors

A third challenge is to find and agree on the distribution of roles between the big umbrella NUDIPU and the rising number of DPOs. Since the District Unions rather than the DPOs is the legitimate base of NUDIPU some DPOs have not so far felt fully represented by NUDIPU. One of the bigger DPOs that until date has been an observer on the NUDIPU board is DHFs local partner UNAPD.

However, few days ago at the General Assembly of NUDIPU held on the 8th and 9th of December the more than 200 delegates decided to give full membership to any DPO that can prove to work nation wide. There by at last the doors were open for UNAPD and other organisations like Mental Health Uganda, Uganda Parents Association of Children with Learning Disabilities (UPACLED), Epilepsy Support Association of Uganda (ESAU), National Association of Deafblind in Uganda (NADBU) and probably more to come.

At the General Assembly of NUDIPU it was furthermore agreed that NUDIPU should recommend other ways to elect the five MPs than through its structures leading to a less politicised disability movement.

So, yes in Uganda they do march together in the streets of Kampala in spite of some internal structural challenges. It seems that they are now also joining a more common road on a daily basis, which might bring them even further.

Source on the historical data: DPOD Uganda Country Strategy 2007-2011

UNAPD - DHFs partner in Uganda

Uganda National action on Physical Disability (UNAPD) is representing people with various physical disabilities - from polio survivors to people with rheumatism, clubfoots, cerebral palsy and many more. It aims at covering the whole country and has so far local branches in around 30 of the more than 80 districts.

The chairperson of UNAPD Hon. James Mwandha was leader of Uganda's delegation to the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on the Convention on the Rights and Dignity of People with Disabilities and has as such been very much involved in the creation of the UN Convention on the Rights of PWD.

DHF has supported UNAPD since 2002 through three mini projects funded by DPOD and a bigger project supported by the Project Counselling Service (also Danish). Early next year DHF will organise an evaluation of the partnership with UNAPD to establish how best to continue the cooperation in the future.

The disability movement in Uganda is quite diversified. Below is a list of the existing active disability organisations in Uganda; the years mentioned refer to the year of formation (source: DSI, Country Strategy Paper Uganda)

National Union of Disabled Persons of Uganda, NUDIPU, 1987
Epilepsy Support Association of Uganda, ESAU, 1997
Mental Health Uganda, MHU, 1998
Uganda National Action on Physical Disability, UNAPD, 1998
Spinal Cord Injuries Association, Uganda
Uganda National Association of the Deaf, UNAD, 1973
Uganda National Association of the Blind, UNAB, 1970
National Association of Deafblind in Uganda, NADBU, 2005
Blind But Able Organisation, 1992
Uganda Parents Association of Children with Learning Disabilities, UPACLED, 1998
Uganda Parents' Care for the Mentally Handicapped Children, 2000
Uganda Disabled Women's Association, UDWA, 1986
Disabled Women's Network and Resource Organisation, DWNRO, 1996
Deaf Women's Development Association, DWDA
National Union of Women with Disabilities of Uganda, NUWODU, 2001
Youth with Disabilities Development Forum, YDDF, 1999
Makerere University Disabled Students Association, MUDISA, 1993