Skip to main content

#WhatWENeed in Pakistan - Mainstreaming Disability to Create Inclusion



STEP (Special Talent Exchange Program) was conceived and initiated in Pakistan by persons with disabilities themselves in 1997. As a cross disability organization, STEP is committed to mainstreaming disability in development through empowering individuals and organizations of persons with disabilities as well as sensitizing society about rights based approach. (See their strategic goals.)
Some of their major contributions include (i) creating employment and livelihood opportunities for persons with disabilities, (ii) pioneering Disability Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction in Pakistan (iii) introducing Inclusive Education for girls with disabilities in KP (iv) ensuring participation of  persons with disabilities  in electoral and political processes (v) promoting accessibility of infrastructure, ICT and communications (vi) advocacy and lobbying for the rights based policies, frameworks and legislation at national, regional and international platforms (vii) developing referrals for health and rehabilitation (viii) research and publication (ix) direct support for assistive devices
See here a video created by STEP on #WhatWENeed in Pakistan!



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Disability as an Intersectional Human Rights Movement - An Interview with Janice Cambri from the Philippines

TCI Asia Pacific recently interviewed Janice Cambri from the Philippines. A survivor of psychiatry, her personal history is what propelled her to become a disability rights activist. She founded the first advocate group for persons with psychosocial disabilities in the Philippines after being introduced to the CRPD and TCI Asia Pacific in 2014. She works with a strong identity of a self advocate and draws from her own experience to work towards ending human rights violations of persons with psychosocial disabilities. A long time leftist activist, it is Janice’s alliance with the leftist movement in the Philippines that has helped shape her intersectional point of view when it comes to understanding disability. She is a strong advocate for more discussions on capitalism and it’s effect on driving the biomedical mental health systems. For many years now, Janice has been involved in national, regional and international level advocacy not only for the rights of persons with psychosocia...

From the Mental Health Movement to the Disability Movement - In Conversation with Yeni Rosa Damayanti

Left: Yeni Rosa Damayanti Recently, TCI Asia Pacific spoke with Yeni Rosa Damayanti, Chairperson of the Indonesian Mental Health Association, about her experience with international, regional and national advocacy in human rights for persons with disabilities, the ideologies she aligns herself with and where she sees and hopes to see persons with psychosocial disabilities in the future. Yeni has many years of experience working on various issues of rights for persons with psychosocial disabilities and her work has not been limited to the mental health sector, often collaborating and engaging with other human rights movements and the cross disability movement. She is also a member of TCI Asia Pacific and has strongly pushed for a paradigm shift in mental health advocacy to move towards the development sector and disability movement. She has considerable experience with advocacy and has been pivotal in changing mental health legislation to be more CRPD compliant and inclusive in Indo...

Is ‘mental health’ contrary to human rights?

Blog contributed by : Tina  Minkowitz Founder/President Centre for the Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry When we go to a doctor’s office we may feel nervous, apprehensive.   We worry about test results, we worry about whether a treatment might do more harm than good.   We put our trust in the practitioner provisionally and hope she is trustworthy and competent.   But ‘mental health’ visits can be something else entirely.   Only in ‘mental health’ can a doctor end a consultation by advising your family to have you locked up under the supervision and control of medicalized wardens, where you will be forced to take mind-numbing and mind-disassembling drugs.   ‘Mental health’ and social failure ‘Mental health’ diagnoses, especially when consultation is initiated by someone other than the person herself, amount to a stamp of social failure, and set in motion a cascade of events leading to delegitimizatio...