Programme Extension Associates and Community Educators from Northeast Region of Caritas India’s Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) programme assembled at Guwahati, Assam for an exchange and cross-learning of achievements, solutions and challenges of the programme. 

The participants gathered for a Training of Trainers meeting at Don Bosco Institute, Guwahati during November 7-9, 2022.

Fr. Sushil Modi, Administrator of Caritas India said Caritas India greatly acknowledges the contribution of CBR in reaching out to persons with disabilities across the country. He shared that it is a great service to humanity and wished the participants for fruitful learning to serve persons with disabilities.

He urged participants to focus more on children, women and persons with disabilities who need more attention. He observed that the northeast is a difficult terrain and context and reaching out to the people in remote areas is always a challenge. He appreciated the field teams’ efforts to reach out to them meaningfully. 

The three days of training gave the platform to the participants to exchange their achievements, challenges, solutions, and innovative practices from their respective locations. It also helped the field teams to get acquainted with the concept of Disability Inclusion on Disaster Risk Reduction (DI DRR), DPO facilitation, early intervention and rehabilitation, gender inclusion, community mobilization, policies related to safeguarding, child protection and Prevention of Sexual Harassment (POSH).

Ms. Netrasikha, Programme officer and Mr. K Kempaiah, Impact Lead of CBR gathered the expectations of the participants related to facilitation of SHGs and DPOs, early intervention and rehabilitation services, cross-learning, promoting community-level groups, knowledge of the acts and network building. All the programme extension associates presented their achievements, good practices and challenges.

Mr. Kempaiah appreciated the team for reaching out to the community and suggested including achievements of the Block level Self-Helf Groups (BSHGs) into District level Self-Helf Group (DSHG) programmes. He insisted that it needs to be structured with the general body, governing body and the EC with gender balance and cross-disability representation. He asked the team to ensure women leadership in the DPOs besides enabling them to have their own MoA and Rules and regulations. 

The Northeast team was encouraged to document the details of general, governing, and executive body members as they serve as the second-line leadership who would be elected to the governing body and then to the EC gradually. Emphasising the importance of all five thematic areas, he asked the team to focus on empowerment aspects by building village-level groups and federating them at the block level. 

The Impact Lead suggested DPOs to address common problems (issues) affecting the majority of persons with disabilities in their respective areas and be trained on identifying issues, prioritizing them and taking up with the duty bearers through a dialogue process. The emphasis was given to conducting village-level meetings and transferring knowledge and skills to the community. Besides, the community level groups such as the children support groups, mothers’ support groups, stakeholders groups and women with disability, forums need to be formed and strengthened as part of community mobilization and sustainable process

Facilitating a Group reflection on gender, Ms. Netra and Mr. Francis build an understanding of gender, gender discrimination practices, causes for discrimination and how to address the gaps in gender inclusion and participation using four case studies and facilitating group discussions and reflections. 

The program Lead of CBR, Mr. George shared the evaluation findings and recommendations of the Caritas India CBR programme. He also shared about the key strategic pillars and explained how the CBR components can be linked. Good practices of photography and writing case studies depicting the status of the person, interventions made, and positive changes with the future plans were shared with the team.

Mr. Kempaiah oriented the participants with three modules of the SHG handbook – understanding disability and human rights, SHGs’ structure and function, advocacy and lobbying. 

The external resource persons from Shishu Sarothi, an organization working on multiple disabilities and upholding the rights of persons with disabilities facilitated a session on early intervention focusing on major milestones of child development, simple techniques of screening, referral and interventions that need to be made for early detection and intervention. This early intervention makes a lot of difference to the quality of life of a child with developmental delays. It is necessary to work with the families of such children, and health personnel and make use of the services available from the NGOs and the government for helping such children and families. 

Mr. Kempaiah oriented the teams on promoting children’s support groups, mothers’ support groups, village-level stakeholders’ committees and Forums of women with disabilities. He said that these groups along with the VSHGs and the DPOs would bring sustainability to the programme interventions even after our support ceases. 

Ms. Shimray from Caritas India took a virtual session to introduce the prevention of sexual harassment (POSH) in the workplace. Caritas India is committed to build awareness amongst the employees, and other staff working in the organisation on POSH. She explained the provisions under the POSH and explained the importance of an internal committee within the organization to address the grievances and report to the management and the government.

Resource persons from Shishu Saroti took a session on promoting rehabilitation services to persons with Cerebral palsy (CP), Multiple Disabilities (MD), Intellectual disability (ID) and autism. They explained the process of assessing the needs of these children and adults to plan interventions covering all the aspects of the growth and development of these children. There is a need to work on the activities of daily living, communication and mobility using a variety of techniques right from therapy, provision of assistive devices and simple techniques of teaching in a community set-up. Besides working on the rehabilitation aspects it is necessary to work on the environmental barriers that hinder the participation of persons with disabilities. 

Ms. Sigrid Baldinger, the Programme Coordinator for northeast India on behalf of Light for the World addressed the group online from Austria. She highlighted the overall reach in the 12 countries where they work and also highlighted the achievements in the area of economic rehabilitation. She shared some good practices of the programmes and suggested some areas for improvement. She also gathered feedback on what needs to be done to foster disability inclusion in the programme.

In concluding remarks, Mr George oriented the teams on Caritas India’s code of conduct. Mr. Kempaiah oriented the template prepared for developing a plan of action. The participants were requested to give the targets and the timelines for achieving various milestones in the next 3-4 months.