Advocacy and lobbing for the rights of person with disability

• Advocacy and lobbying for person with disability is one of the main thematic areas of ORHAN. ORHAN is using multiple approaches and strategies for advocacy and lobbying for protecting and promoting rights of person with disabilities. Following are the some of rights based activities of ORHAN.
  1. Land Rights of PWD’s – Supported by USI under SPICE project
  2. Rights for legal documents such as medical certificate etc, supported by IWPR.
  3. Rights of women with disabilities –Supported by AJWS
  4. Reading rights of Person with Visual Impairment Supported by Neelan thiruchelvam trust (NTT), USAID under Spice project
  5. Rights for information of Deaf community- Supported by NTT.

  ORHAN has formed a provincial level network of women with disabilities consisting 05 district level networks of women with disabilities for the advocacy and lobbing for women and girls with disabilities. No of Right violations against women and girls with disabilities are identified by the members of district level networks –They themselves women with disability and are reported to the district level leaders. The leaders report the issues to the relevant stakeholders in order to find Appropriate solution for the issues within their circle. More serious issues which could not be found solutions by the members of the networks are reported to other networks functioning in the northern province, More serious issues  which could not be found solution in the networks level are reported to ORHAN in order to find solution in the organizational level.

  To protect and promote right for information of deaf community , ORHAN trained and assigned 05 sign language interpreters in the 05 district offices of district SSO’s .These interpreters are providing sign language interpreter service to the deaf community who are coming to the various government department such as kachcheri, Ds office, Police station, Court etc….. The government department are obtaining this service from SSO office whenever need for a sign interpreting service is arises.

  To protect and promote the rights for information and reading of the blind community, ORHAN has stabilized 04 Braille and talking book units in 04 public libraries of Jaffna, Kilinochchi,Mullaitheevu and vavuniya districts. These braille units are providing reading and reference services for the person with visual disabilities through braille books and computer based talking books.

  To protect and promote rights for education of children with disabilities, ORHAN has been providing a high priority for the improvement of inclusive education in government mainstream schools.  In addition to supporting the government to stabilize model inclusive education units in the schools, ORHAN is providing  awareness training on inclusive education to the government teachers and education officers .To improve the quality of the teaching and learning methods in the inclusive education units, ORHAN provided learning and teaching materials for inclusive education units  in all 12 education zones in northern province.Thease 02 important programs –human resource development and psychical resource development of inclusive education were supported by IMHO.

   

  ORHAN had done a strong advocacy for the rights for sports and games for children and youth with disables through successfully conducting “ ORHAN Sports meet” – An island wide sports meet for disables, in 08 times with the support of various donors such as Handcuffed international(HI),UNDP, USAID under spice project, UNHCR, SOLIDAR.

  This year 2017 its plan to contact provincial level special Olympic for children with intellectual disabilities with the support of BAT and Special Olympics Serendipity.

Activities Photos

Strengthen  Disable people organizations DPO’s and their net works

ORHAN does strongly believe the team work as an effective magnesium to achieve its goals and objectives. Therefore one of its major policies is supporting and strengthening other disabled people organization (DPO’s) and their networks function in the country.

It has build-up the administrative capacity of no of DPO’s function in the north. Swish development cooperation (SDC) and OXFAM supported some selected DPO’s to improve their good governance and good practises through ORHAN..

In addition to above, OXFAM supported ORHAN to increase the capacity of NPCODA (Northern province consortium of organizations for differently abled a network of DPO’s) in northern province.

ORHAN has been providing its fullest supports to strengthen DOJF (Disabled organization joint front)-A national umbrella organizations of DPO’s in Sri Lanka.

ORHAN is one of the active members of vavuniya district NGO consortium and kilinochchi  district NGO council.

ORHAN gives High priority to research works in disability sector .It has published several publications. Last year (2016)it released a book on rights for education of children with disability with the support of CBM lanka. It conducted a research for child fund in mullaitheevu and mannar district and A comprehensive research report was submitted to child fund in 2015 . This research highlights the priority needs of children and youth with disabilities in war Prevailed districts. ORHAN completed another research in order to identified   the situation of children with Cerebral palsy in mullaitheevu and mannar district for motivation Lanka. This research report also indicates no of findings on the situation of children with Cerebral palsy.

This year, ORHAN plans to publish another research book related with freedom of moment of the person with visual disabilities.

Activities Photos