Self Help GroupSince 1995 in Cambodia, 2005 in Myanmar and 2016 in India, New Humanity chose to promote inclusion of people with disability strengthenin all development’s aspects of the person inserted in its context and community. For this reason all our projects follow the methodology of Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) as an approach for an integrated development of people with disability.

 

The CBR started by the will of World Health Organization after the Alma-Ata Declaration in 1978. It has been fostered as a strategy for the improvement of access to rehabilitation services for people with disabilities in low-middle income countries, through a rational valorization of local resources. During last forty years, through a collaboration with other UN agencies, NGOs and Associations, CBR developed until becoming a multi-sector strategy facing deepest needs of people with disability, ensuring their participation and inclusion in society and improving their life conditions.

Home therapy

In 2004 ILO, UNESCO and WHO defined CBR as a “strategy of development of communities aimed to the rehabilitation, poverty reduction, equal opportunities and social inclusion of all people with disabilities”.

CBR recognize that all people with disabilities should have access to all services available for other people in their communities, such as health services, child programs, social welfare and education. Furthermore it emphasize human rights and stimulate actions against poverty, demanding also government’s support and a strategic policies’ development.

Home therapy

 

 

During the same year, a matrix has been published in order to provide a common frame of reference for CBR programs. This matrix consists in 5 key components – health, education, livelihood, social and empowerment. Every component is set of 5 elements and first four are linked to key development sectors, reflecting in this way CBR’s multi-sector focus. Particularly, last component is linked to skills of people with disabilities, their families and communities (empowerment), crucial to grant access to every development sector, improving life conditions and human rights for people with disabilities.

CBR matrix

Activities in slumCBR’s program don’t have to implement every component or elements of this matrix, it has been instead designed in order to let programs select options which better satisfy local needs, priorities and resources. CBR programs not only are developing specific activities for people with disabilities, but they also aim to create partnerships and synergies with other sectors not inserted in CBR, in order to grant access to these sectors to all people with disabilities and their families.

For this reason New Humanity’s staff isn’t focusing only on people with disabilities, but they are going to villages, slums, in their houses involving the family and the community. We are carrying on sensitization and awareness activities in communities and advocacy activities with local authorities. We are involving relatives and neighbors in therapies’ provision in order to make them do therapies even when the specialist is not there, we are also trying to strengthen families’ economy and to improve the whole villages’ conditions, in order to develop the whole environment where the person with disability is inserted and in this way promote a real inclusion of the person in community’s social life.

Here you can find all our projects about disability.

 

Anita and her brother

 

 

We really do believe that the development can be real only through a real inclusion of all isolated people, and for this reason we decided to adopt this integrated approach, which allow us to walk side by side with local communities and to improve life condition of most vulnerable people.