2-Days advocacy capacity building training to the disability sister wings of political parties

A two-days training was facilitated at Pension Vasana Hotel on 1st and 2nd of September, 23, for the members of disability sister-wings affiliated to different political parties. The participants were the persons with disabilities with different disability types and ethnic backgrounds. The program was organized by CIL-Kathmandu, in partnership with Canada Fund for Local Initiatives (CFLI). The training aimed to develop the competence of the participants to enable them to raise and advocate for their political rights, and hence to finally promote the participation and representation of persons with disabilities in the decision making level, both within and outside the political party.

The entire training was divided into 8 sessions, which were led by disability expert Mr. Manish Prasai. The training was presented in a learner-centered approach, where the partakers were provided with abundant opportunities to reflect, discuss, study and plan to extract the findings and knowledge through out. The participants worked in group to develop their knowledge on the idea of political rights and disability participation in politics, the existing barriers, possible responders to the issues, legal bases and to devise advocacy strategies and formulate the drafts of memorandum regarding disability inclusion and participation.

The trainer facilitated the necessary knowledge, skills and strategies to identify, raise and advocate for any issue of persons with disabilities so that they get addressed. In addition, the guest trainers, who were the members of parliament of two different political parties and from two different gender, shared their political struggle, story of attaining the success and importance of political involvement and participation for persons with disabilities spotlighting their lived experiences.

The trainees were able to explore various authentic documents to justify the legal bases of their rights and extract the needed information. The skills on advocacy, organized planning of advocacy and development of advocacy letter were also additional abilities developed by the participants in the training. Furthermore, a platform to interact with policy maker and opportunity to co-learn by reflecting on the concepts and hurdles to achieve the political inclusions were the important parts of the training acknowledged by the partakers during the feedback. Many participants recognized the importance of the training and advised the organization to launch the programs/events to a larger extents to boost the political rights of persons with disabilities, since, politics is the base for any other kinds of entitlements to obtain. The sharing and response from the participants stood as a great motivation to the organization to create the further spaces to learn, and share more on political rights and inclusive representation for persons with disabilities.