NWR Stakeholders pledged to promote CBID in their Actions
The Governor of the NWR has commended the Socio Economic Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (SEEPD) program of the CBC Health Services (CBCHS) for taking lead in promoting disability and inclusive development in the Region. Adolf Lele L’Afrique was speaking while launching a two-day workshop on Decentralization Support Structure organized by the SEEPD program, thanks to funding from the Australian Government.
“We are very grateful to the CBC Health Services and partners for building the capacities of decentralized services on how to ensure the full participation of persons with disabilities in development.” The workshop which brought together 28 staff from 14 decentralization structures took place from April 29-30, 2021 at the Baptist Center Nkwen in Bamenda.
According to the SEEPD Program Manager, Awa Jacques Chirac, the objective of the workshop was to build participants’ understanding of the importance and relevance of inclusive development and provide them with the tools and framework of thinking to foster Community Based Inclusive Development in policy and practice. The Project Manager wished that decentralization support structures, ministerial departmental and local development structures will increasingly adopt the inclusive practice in their operation.
The Director of CBC Health Services noted that over its 10 years of existence, the SEEPD program has in partnership with other developmental actors yielded good results for persons with disabilities, their families, and communities. Prof. Tih Pius Muffih charged the stakeholders to be at the forefront of promoting inclusion.
For 2 days, the main facilitator of the workshop, Mr. Mue Peter who has an in-depth mastery of the disability and development concept drilled the participants on practical ways to promote inclusion in their different developmental actions. The participants who were carefully selected from UCCC, MINEPAT, Public Works, PNDP, MINDENO, MINDEVELL, FEICOM, MINAS, MINDHU, and the NW Regional Council understood the CBID concept and mapped out strategies to break barriers in their structures.
In an interview with the Director of General of MINDENO, it is a wake-up call to do more for persons with disabilities. ‘This workshop has inspired me a lot and subsequently, we will make sure all our future projects take the needs of persons with disabilities into consideration. Thus, when sending inputs to farmers, we will set aside a quarter for them,” the MIDENO boss noted.
To Jum Cyprain, Social Environmentalist of PNDP Program, “Before, I didn’t know impairment plus barriers will lead to disability and when barriers are no more, disability will no longer exist. So we will work with our institution to remove those barriers for persons with disabilities to be included in the mainstream of our projects “.
With the strategies mapped out by these stakeholders, it is hoped that a few months in the future, persons with disability will feel the impact of the workshop through the implemented actions by the stakeholders.