Liberia's disability community works toward equal rights but with few funds

From The Inquirer in Liberia. In the picture, A woman practices sewing at the ADFI Training Cetre in Slipway.

Since the end of the war, Liberia’s disabled community has experienced less development in relation to the rest of the population. Education, employment, lack of skills training and access to public buildings all come with more difficulties for disabled persons in Liberia. Lacking these facilities and opportunities can create frustrating and disappointing circumstances for disabled persons throughout Liberia. Many even feel they must go about the streets begging for alms, or feel the effects of stigmas against them. However, others have made remarkable strides towards disabled empowerment over the years with a “Sky is the limit” attitude: that disabilities should not serve as a reason to hold anyone back.

Organizations like the Association of Disabled Females International (ADFI) and the Christian Association of the Blind (CAB) have undertaken initiatives to improve lives both technically and academically. The ADFI through their programs have trained disabled females how to thread beads into cleverly decorative patterns that are very beautiful and can enable them with the opportunity to provide for themselves and their families than begging. Though they lament that they are being left out of opportunities provided for other women, they, with smiles on their faces are learning how to sew clothes on the regular sewing machines at their headquarters down Slip-Way in central Monrovia with no barrier from their form of disability.

Executive Director of ADFI, Ricardia B. Dennis, in an interview with this paper advised disabled women to be courageous and brave; calling on them “get up and do something, don’t shy away. Be a part.” She stressed that though they are trying to train and capacitate their people, disabled women are often not given the opportunity, but rather being denied access to employment and other vital social services necessary to help improve their ability to find jobs and lead their lives.

“How can we help our people, from where do we begin?” she asked, noting that some people look at persons with disabilities and say “what do I have to gain from this [type of person]?” “We [the disabled community} need to be integrated into society, it is binding on government to integrate the disabled in the society but not to live separated from our brethren,” she stated. The disabled community has had a lot of money spent on their up-keep and education especially since UP-led Government, but it is a mystery as to why their lives are, on average, still in a deplorable state, though they are trying to meet up with the standard of today’s living.

It then leaves one to wonder what the budget of the “Group of 77” is for, if it is not showing improvement in their lives. It also leaves room for why the funds provided for the “Group of “77” in a separate budget under the Vice President’s office can’t be transferred to the Budget of the National Commission on Disability to take care of their affairs since they are the ones directly affected. Visiting some of the centers for disabled persons in Monrovia, it appears not enough money is reaching the people who actually need and deserve it. And this is a crucial issue in empowering the rights of the disabled in the country.

“We are not being respected; they (society) still do not understand that they have to respect us as we are; rather they continue to see us as something else and not human beings,” Dennis furthered. She mentioned that they are getting some funds from the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. The ADFI is a disabled organization looking after the interest of disabled females and children. They have the total number of a 1,300 beneficiaries and members. It teaches disabled persons skills so that they can work as productive citizens and helps to create awareness amongst them in knowing and advocating for their rights.

But they are just a small organization working to make a major change in how the population sees disabled persons in general. At present, society at large has to make a lot of changes in order to provide Liberia’s disabled with the same rights as the able-bodied population.