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    • UNESCAP-APCD High-level Intergovernmental Meeting on the Midpoint Reviews of the Asian and Pacific Decade of Disabled Persons 2003-2012
    • Interview Corner
    • Disabled Peoples’ International (DPI) World Assemblys
    • The 15th World Congress of the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD)
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    • Director’s Message
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  • Newsletter 22
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Director’s Message

Greetings from APCD!

The Royal Thai Government and the Government of Japan through JICA started their technical cooperation for the Asia-Pacific Development Center on Disability Project Phase II, 1 August 2007 - 31 July 2012. This cooperation will hopefully enable APCD to cover areas of disability, which APCD did not focus on very much in the first five years, for example,involving more persons with intellectual disabilities and hearing impairments. Activities for persons with intellectual disabilities could include training programs for their families and advocates. Regarding persons with hearing impairments, activities could include developing a standardized sign language and training sign language interpreter.

Other major focuses for the next 5 years are as follows:

1. APCD will continue to develop and strengthen selfhelp groups of people with disabilities. It will encourage mutual cooperation with its network organizations so that disabled persons’ organizations will be real "partners" with APCD. Thus, concrete action plans between APCD and its collaborating organizations are expected to be developed to ensure mutual contribution on disability activities.

2. APCD will emphasize development of sub-regional networks which will enable cooperation of countries in theseregions including national PWD organizations and stakeholders to conduct the following activities:

   1. Safeguard the rights of PWDs at the sub-regional level
   2. Develop networks and cooperation among associations/cooperative network with the public sector at sub-regional levels and the private sector on PWD issues.
   3. Support the set up of PWD organizations to develop their potential, exchange information, and collaborate with their government.
   4. Cooperate with APCD in organizing disability and development activities.

3. APCD and its network organizations from both public and private sectors will enhance cooperation with the business sector by incorporating all disability issues in the business sector (e.g. promotion of built-environment accessibility, job opportunities for PWDs, and budgetary support for corporate social responsibility).

   To ensure effectiveness and sustainability of the APCD and to enable APCD to become internationalized, APCD is under organizational improvement and it will soon be run under the Foundation of APCD. I do hope that our future in promoting disability at the regional level by APCD and its collaborating organizations will effectively achieve its targets of empowerment of PWDs and promotion of a barrier-free society.