Caritas India implores the Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) team to build solidarity amongst the communities, and promote peace, and brotherhood by giving a better life through the existing opportunities.

CBR organized a regional capacity-building workshop for its field teams to facilitate exchange and orient new intervention processes, policies, and key strategic pillars. The programme was organized for its 41 participants from the northern, eastern and western regions on October 10-12, 2022 at RCDSS, Ajmer.

“Caritas is an international brand, and it is a Latin word meaning LOVE,” said Fr. (Dr.) Jolly Puthenpura, Assistant Executive Director of Caritas India. “Caritas implements a number of community development programs and CBR is a powerful programme reaching out to over 72,000 persons with disabilities.”

He urged all the team members to extend the services to Persons with disabilities as they are the most marginalized in the community.

The workshop saw the sharing of achievements, challenges and solutions by the team members from the respective regions. Mr. Kempaiah informed the team about the future focus of the programme to promote early intervention, strengthening health and rehabilitation for the severely disabled and persons with high support needs, gender inclusion, DI DRR and building the organizations of persons with disabilities more strongly. He also shared about mainstreaming CBR Components with the KSPs based on the five-year plan.

A session on facilitating early intervention services for children under 6 years with developmental delays was taken by Ms. Anjali Sen Gupta from RMKM NGO. She gave a detailed orientation on how to work with people with Cerebral Palsy, Autism, Multiple Disabilities, and Intellectual Disabilities. The team was quite absorbed in the sessions due to interactive and participatory approach.

Mr. Tominic George, the Program Lead of CBR and Mr. K. Kempaiah oriented the teams on promoting Disability-Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction (DIDRR) in the CBR programme areas. Mr. Tominic said, our programme areas and the people living there are quite vulnerable in an emergency.

It is necessary to understand the DRR process and make the process disability inclusive using a multipronged approach.

The emphasis was given on sensitizing the community including persons with disabilities, their families and the community stakeholders on how to prepare themselves in case of an emergency, develop resilience and mitigate the situation by working with the stakeholders who are responsible for disaster management. Persons with disabilities should be part of the decision-making and planning process and the basic testimony that persons with disabilities can contribute a lot in such a situation only if they are encouraged to participate and share their concerns and ideas. The motto is “leave no one behind.” The DI RRR manual was introduced by using six short presentations.

Mr. Kempaiah and Mr. B Namghaklung Kabui introduced the three modules of the DPO training handbook which was earlier revised and updated by CI CBR. They urged them to facilitate the DPOs in such a way that all the DPOs have gender balance, cross-disability representation and women with disabilities are in the leadership position. Further, they should have a three-level structure having the general body, governing body and executive committee with proper MoA and Rules and regulations. They must strive hard to dialogue with the duty bearers to promote the single agendum of bringing system exchanges benefiting the large number of persons with disabilities even beyond the program areas. The DPOs have to decide if they would go for registration as formal organizations or work as a network based on an informed decision-making process.

Mr. Tominic George drew the attention of the participants to the key findings and recommendations of the recently conducted evaluations of CI CBR. He also presented the key strategic pillars and shared how to link CBR components with KSPs.

Mr. Kempaiah shared the highlights of the child protection policy while Mr. George shared the safeguarding and POSH policies. They stressed that as Caritas employees, we should not only be aware of the provisions of the policies but also need to earnestly follow them and prevent others who are connected with our programmes from violating any provisions of the policies.

They stressed the code of conduct that needs to be followed as CI’s employees.

Mr. B Namghaklung Kabui oriented the teams on the importance of promoting community based groups such as children’s support groups, carers’ groups, stakeholders committees and the formation and facilitation of women with disabilities forums. He said that these community groups are very important as they will sustain the process through a community-led process in the long run.

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 (the RPD Act 2016) was presented by Mr. Namghaklung Kabui by following eight principles for the empowerment of persons with disabilities laid down by the convention were briefly shared apart from the detailing of the Act as per the component of CBR.

1. respect for inherent dignity, individual autonomy including the freedom to make one’s own choices, and independence of persons.
2. non-discrimination.
3. full and effective participation and inclusion in society.
4. respect for difference and acceptance of persons with disabilities as part of human diversity and humanity.
5. equality of opportunity.
6. accessibility.
7. equality between men and women.
8. respect for the evolving capacities of children with disabilities and respect for the right of children with disabilities to preserve their identities.

Mr. Kempaiah reflected with the groups on the understanding of sex, sexuality and gender. He focused on the gender gaps that are prevailing in society due to the social taboos and patriarchal system prevailing in society. Persons with disabilities and in particular women with disabilities are the most vulnerable as they are more prone to abuse, discrimination and preventing opportunities that come their way. He suggested the team to focus on girls and women with disabilities amongst the persons with disabilities to ensure gender equality in the programme areas. Further, he discussed various strategies through which these gaps can be addressed through our programme interventions.

Mr Tominic handled the last open forum to discuss issues, concerns, and the way forward. He stressed the need to focus on the work to make the programs more meaningful to the community that we serve.