A person with physical disability casts his vote at the first Indonesian direct presidential election

USAID believes that it is of vital importance to identify local partners and build long-term relationships that will help us achieve U.S. foreign policy and assistance objectives of promoting democracy, human rights, and development for all.

Therefore, USAID, in collaboration with its local missions, identifies local partners and provides them with the means to build DPO capacity, increase the political participation of persons with disabilities, and promote and protect the rights of people with disabilities.

Learn more about USAID's disability programs in

USAID's program in Albania, implemented by the Albania Disability Rights Foundation, focuses on promoting and protecting the civil rights of people with disabilities (PWD) by facilitating the implementation of a disability policy and a legal framework, and by developing an instrument for their ongoing monitoring.

The project seeks to

• Improve the understanding and attitudes of relevant governmental and nongovernmental agencies and policy-makers through the promotion of the National Disability Strategy (NDS) at national and local levels
• Increase the capacities of disabled people’s organizations (DPOs) and relevant stakeholders, through training and technical expertise and consultancy by national, regional, and international disability professionals
• Increase responsibility and accountability by developing annual monitoring/shadow reports as an instrument available for consistent monitoring of the implementation of NDS
• Develop extended networks to advance and mainstream disability in other advocacy and reform agendas challenging exclusion and fragmentary intervention and promoting an all-inclusive society

Managed by Health for Everyone Foundation, Pleven, USAID's disability program in Bulgaria seeks to create job opportunities for people with disabilities. The project plans to establish twelve social enterprises that offer jobs and skill development in collaboration with local businesses.

In addition, a social network consisting of twenty-eight regional partners will be established with disabled persons organizations (DPO), local government, and business.

Through four training centers, 1,000 people with disabilities per year will receive job-skills training and placement services. Through these programs, the project will improve the capacity of the DPOs involved.

The Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening (CEPPS) is implementing the Enfranchising Persons with Disability in Electoral and Political Process program. CEPPS consists of, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), The International Republican Institute (IRI), and IFES.

The CEPPS program will focus on efforts to reverse the political marginalization of citizens with disabilities. Citizens with disability in nearly every country are invisible to political and governmental decision makers. As a result, the laws crafted by elected leaders, and the policies and programs designed by government ministries, rarely take their needs into account. To address this issue, citizens with disabilities need to be more visible in election events, and in the political arenas they establish.

Over the coming twenty months, CEPPS partners will work in concert in four countries—Nicaragua, Armenia, Albania and Sierra Leone—to advance the political and electoral participation of citizens with disabilities.These four countries were chosen because each has

• an electoral event within the next twenty months
• viable disability organizations capable of coordinating community action
• faced a conflict or crisis that has caused disability and directly and negatively impacted the lives of its citizens with disabilities

Further, the CEPPS partners are presently active in all four nations.

For this USAID-funded project, five National Disabilities Federations, comprising a total of 166 associations of people with disabilities throughout the country, are working together to promote political and labor rights for people with disabilities. The project seeks to contribute to the practice and enforcement of rights of people with disabilities in Ecuador by promoting political participation and job placement.

Specifically, the project works to

• Promote the participation in elections of citizens with people with disabilities through public awareness campaigns, greater access to polling stations, and transportation to the polls
• Implement a job placement service (Servicio de Integración Laboral [SIL]) for people with disabilities

Through a partnership between Save the Children and the Georgian Coalition for Independent Living, this project will engage people with disabilities in Georgia and bring to bear international expertise, using best practices that have demonstrated tangible results in empowering disabled persons organizations.

The project will work to strengthen national, regional, and local associations and establish relationships with government bodies. People with disabilities will be active participants in this process. In addition, the project will produce four videos on elections and accessibility.

In Ghana, USAID works with the Ghana Center for Democratic Developments to build the capacity of disabled persons organizations (DPO), increasing the political participation of people with disabilities, and promoting and protecting the rights of people with disabilities. The project will seek to develop the capacity of these organizations through workshops for DPOs. Training will be offered on a variety of subjects including group development, advocacy and lobbying, fundraising, understanding and becoming involved in the electoral process, and assertiveness training and confidence building (especially for women).

The program will also increase the participation of people with disabilities in local elections by monitoring and drawing attention to constraints that limit their participation. The program makes a strong commitment to ensure that people with disabilities will contend for positions in the District Assemblies and Unit Committees.

Under the Opportunities for Vulnerable Children (OVC) program, USAID/Indonesia, in partnership

Caca (pronounced Chacha), who is blind, learns Braille at the USAID-funded Early Intervention Center, part of the Opportunities for Vulnerable Children Program implemented by HKI

with Helen Keller International and a large group of other international and Indonesian organizations, is implementing activities to provide assistance to – and advocate for – children with various disabilities including children who are blind or have low vision, children who are deaf or have low hearing, autism, learning disabilities and multiple disabilities. The OVC program is developing a viable model to provide education opportunities for these children. The program includes successful identification, assessment, and enrollment of children with disabilities into the public school system; early intervention programs; resource networks for children with disabilities and their teachers; training for public school teachers and principals; public advocacy; and acceptance, endorsement, and support from the Ministry of National Education. The objective of OVC is to create a sustainable, effective model for inclusion of students with various disabilities within the public education infrastructure. This is being accomplished by leveraging resources, advocating for policy change, and implementing these new policies. To date, these activities have led to a substantial increase in the number of children with disabilities attending school, coupled with increased availability and improved quality of inclusive education services.

A cross sector of individuals representing a variety of disabilities are involved with all aspects of the OVC program. They provide input on curriculum and learning materials and offer counseling and support. They are members of the policy task force for inclusive education in Jakarta and are key players in assessing students with who are blind or have low vision. OVC depends on the direct participation of many professionals who are blind and/or deaf as well as professionals with various levels of visual and/or hearing related disabilities whose input and expertise are vital to the program’s objectives. USAID funds one full-time OVC trainer who is blind.

Persons with physical and intellectual disabilities also receive substantive consideration when USAID/Indonesia’s other programs are implemented. The Tsunami Recovery and Reconstruction program’s West Coast Highway project is ensuring that bridge sidewalks and approaches to all bridges are wheel-chair friendly. The Democracy and Governance Program will assist disability groups with developing effective electoral rights strategies for the 2009 Presidential elections and is also implementing livelihood and small-scale economic development projects such as providing support for farmers and fisherman—some of whom have a physically disability.

In addition to training and equipping DPOs to advocate effectively and be involved in the decision-making process on behalf of their communities, local authorities will be trained and equipped with relevant information and skills to prepare a disabilities policy to introduce into their routine procedures. Local partners will also receive assistance to design and implement a cycle of small grants that address issues of inclusion and accessibility for persons with disabilities in local communities, targeting infrastructure, and information campaigns.

The USAID-funded program, Promoting the Rights of Individuals with Disabilities, implemented by Counterpart International, comprises four core programmatic components:

• Organizational development training and mentoring for disabled persons organizations (DPO) based on Counterpart’s newly created pre-certification methodology
• Advanced advocacy training and technical assistance to DPOs
• Regional and international DPO and government networking and public hearings
• Partnership, advocacy campaign and social enterprise grants

Counterpart’s implementing partner for this program will be the nationwide Civil Society Support Center Network Association (ARGO) in Kazakhstan. Counterpart will also work with a variety of DPOs from the United States, Europe, and the Soviet Union as resource partners through their partnership grant program.

USAID’s Building an Inclusive Development Community project is implemented by Mobility International USA (MIUSA). The project seeks to increase the participation by people with disabilities, including women and girls, in U.S.-based international development programs as participants, agents, administrators, and consultants.

The project focuses on strengthening USAID mission responses and local disabled person organization’s capacity to work to reduce the barriers that people with disabilities encounter in participating in civic, social, and employment activities.

This project, implemented by Handicap International, will focus on strengthening existing DPOs in both Niger and Burkina Faso. Upon completion of the training programs for DPOs, Handicap International will administer twelve sub-grants to DPOs. Additional sub-grants will be available for DPOs to implement cultural and sporting events. Each organization must match 50 percent of the grant awarded.

The Information Center and Development Resources program (Centro de Informacion y Recursos para el Desarrollo [CIRD]) aims to increase people with disabilities' participation in government processes by inviting DPOs to compete in a bidding process for sub-grants under the People with Disabilities Initiatives Program. The program is directed at facilitating lead actions by a coalition of DPOs that can mobilize people to improve people with disabilities’ participation in the decision-making process and oversight of governmental programs.

Community Service Organizations (CSOs) and DPOs with national coverage will participate as providers of technical assistance and as sources of experience and best practices. Moreover, the program will support decentralization by applying geographic distribution of institutional capacity-building services to DPOs.

Perspektiva, together with eleven regional members of the “Education for All” Coalition, will implement a program to ensure educational equality for Russian youth and children. The program will be undertaken in twelve communities of Russia by Disability Advocacy Teams.

The program seeks to:

• Strengthen the capacity of the Education for All Coalition to effectively advocate, promote, and implement inclusive education practices locally and at the national level
• Promote positive images of disabled people in twelve communities to break down barriers and negative attitudes toward implementing inclusive schools
• Increase the ability of parents and disabled people locally and nationally to advocate for the rights of disabled children and youths to an equal education and for the rights of people with disabilities in general

The Investing in Women in Development (IWID) fellowship program, managed through the Institute for International Education (IIE), was developed with the intention of working with USAID bureaus, offices, and missions to increase participation of people with disabilities in field-based programs, as well as to assess and report on USAID’s compliance with its disability policy, in particular AAPD 05-07 and AAPD 04-17.

1. The disability sector to build the capacity of the Disabled People’s Organizations to fight for their own rights
2. Governmental institutions working on human rights and disability issues—including parliament, the National Disability Board, and line ministries—in dialogue toward the inclusion of disability in policies, legislation, and implementation of the policies
3. The Zimbabwean general public through the use of the media (both print and electronic) to promote awareness on disability issues and visibility of the rights of people with disabilities.