Manual on How to Involve Disabled People in Development Programs

Building an Inclusive Development Community : a new manual on including people with disabilities in international development programs by MIUSA

Building an Inclusive Development Community: A Manual on Including People with Disabilities in International Development Programs is a Mobility International USA (MIUSA) publication sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and edited by Karen Heinicke-Motsch and Susan Sygall. It is a toolkit for development agencies and others concerned with the inclusion of people with disabilities in all areas of the international development process. The manual includes expert opinions, techniques and guidelines, resource lists, and examples of best practices and lessons learned from around the world to assist programs in bringing people with disabilities at all levels into the international development arena.

The opening section of the manual invites readers to conduct an Organizational Self-Assessment: Checklist for Inclusion, so that organizations and programs can measure their own level of inclusion, identify areas that need improvement and most efficiently use the rest of the manual and incorporate its recommendations.

Subsequent sections cover Management Practices and Human Resource Development, Legal Policy Issues, and Governance as well as Accessibility, Inclusion of Disability in Delivery of Programs/Services, and International and Regional Responses. Sections include information as well as examples of best practices and topic specific resources.

An extensive section on Development Topics and Disability includes chapters on Gender and Disability, Civil Society, Micro Finance, Disaster and Emergency Relief, Refugees and Disability, Domestic Violence, Women with Disabilities and Health Care, Parenting with a Disability, Community Based Rehabilitation, Inclusive Education, Agriculture, and Mental Disabilities and Development. The manual also includes appendices with supplemental information and resources.

Combining expert opinion, practical strategies, examples of best practice and useful resources, Building an Inclusive Development Community is a new tool for development agencies, donors and national and international NGO's to ensure the participation of people with disabilities in the development agenda and that organizations working to alleviate poverty and to advance social justice reach people with disabilities, many of whom are among the poorest of the poor.

For more information about Building an Inclusive Development Community: A Manual on Including People with Disabilities in International Development Programs, please visit http://www.miusa.org/publications/manualpr.htm.

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