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• 2007
• 2006
• 2005
• Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) for Persons with Print Disability
• Training of Managerial Personnel of Independent Living Centers for PWDs
  • General Information
  • Fellowship Application Form
  • Appendix of Application
  • Questionnaire
  • Training Report
  • Participants
• Refresher Training Course in Peer-Counseling for PWDs
• Accessible Web-based Information Networking
• Seminar for South-to-South Cooperation for Decades of PWDs
• Training of Initiators for Self-help Groups of PWDs
• Capacity Building of Self-help Organizations of PWDs
• Community-based Rehabilitation
• Training of ICT for Visually Impaired Persons
• 2004
• 2003

Training Report

APCD organized the Training of Managerial Personnel of Independent Living (IL) Centers for People with Disabilities from March 1-18, 2005. It targeted leaders/ core-members of self-help groups (SHG) or organizations (SHO) of people with disabilities (PWD), which have organized an IL Center or plan to do so, and will conduct advocacy for the rights of PWD at the grass-root level. This time, 6 leaders with disabilities from Pakistan and the Philippines, participated half of whom were women. Persons with severe physical disabilities, were accompanied by their personal assistants from their home countries.

Recently, the number of persons with severe physical disabilities has been increasing in developing countries due to more traffic accidents, improvement of emergency medical care and advanced surgery, etc. However, many survivors with severe physical disabilities are often abandoned at home by desperate families and lose hope to live in their communities where there is no know-how or system to support them. They often have very low self-esteem and less confidence while their families and society in general, regard them as "dependent" burdens and sometimes overprotect them.

The IL Movement, which highly values a disabled person's self-determination on his/her life, started in the U.S.A. in the 1970's and has so far spread to many developed countries, where a number of IL Centers have been established to support the community life, human rights and dignity of persons with severe physical disabilities and other needy persons. It is believed that PWDs can enjoy IL in their community with support from personal assistants, make decisions and take responsibility for their own lives as much as possible. IL Centers enable them to do so by providing services such as dispatching personal assistants and through "Peer-counseling", which is counseling by a trained and experienced person with a disability to a person with a disability in a similar condition (e.g., types of disability, gender). These IL Centers are managed by PWDs.

Despite the difference between developed and developing countries in terms of their national budget for disability issues and social security schemes, the fundamentals of the IL Movement are still equally important. Moreover, since IL Center services are also needed in developing countries where the number of persons with severe physical disabilities is rapidly increasing, they are urged to develop a model of IL Centers with respect to the socio-cultural conditions of their own country.

In this sense, APCD organized this Training with the objective to help initiate or strengthen IL Centers at the grassroots level in the Philippines and Pakistan by training the target group to:

1. deepen their understanding of the fundamentals of the IL Movement and IL Centers
2. enhance their activities for human rights advocacy
3. equip themselves with managerial knowledge/skills for the implementation of IL Centers
4. develop a plan for initiating/strengthening their IL Centers and for services appropriate for their countries' socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds.

This training was successful thanks to resource persons with severe disabilities from Japan, Korea, and Thailand, who have been committed to the IL movement and IL center management nationally and globally, and also two assistant resource persons from Pakistan.