Woman assists rural disabled people in Malaysia

From Bernama in Malaysia:

It is a never ending mission for social volunteer Elizabeth Deng, who since the last six years have been helping the disabled people in the rural district of Baram in Sarawak.

Her mission now covers over 30 settlements scattered sparsely in Baram, a district almost as big as Pahang in Peninsula and often referred as the last frontier of Sarawak.

Life is not kind here where the physical and social development is extremely limited and in the past the disabled were viewed with disdain even by their own families.

Realising how helpless life can be for the disabled in the district,

Elizabeth set out on a mission to help this unfortunate group.

"I am just an ordinary person. No different from anybody else but it really hurts me when we cannot help the helpless while we actually can help them," she told Bernama in an interview.

Though she has no formal training in professional care for the disabled, Elizabeth succeeded in starting a Community-Based Rehabilitation (CBR) in 2003 in her own settlement of Long Laput, in Baram.

Her interest to help this special people appeared when came across 10 disabled people in the settlement who she felt had not been properly taken care off.

Though a sense of sympathy for the disabled prevailed in her close-knit community, Elizabeth realised there had to be a better mechanism to help the community understand the problems faced by the disabled and how to rehabilitate them.

The turning point came through her acquaintance with an assistant director at the Social Welfare Department who suggested to Elizabeth that she should consider trying the CBR programme at her place.

She realised though the programme was the answer to help the disabled, a lot of persuasive efforts were needed in getting the idea across her less informed community.

"It was not easy and the first hurdle for me was to convince the closest people around me... my family. The elders told me to be aware as some were sensitive about others helping their disabled family members and this could embarrass me," said Elizabeth.

Elizabeth was not perturbed by the sentiments and her mother eventually allowed her to start off the programme at an unoccupied longhouse belonging to Elizabeth's late father who was once a community leader in Baram.

With the help of the Social Welfare Department which provided two trained teachers, Elizabeth started guiding the first batch of disabled who gradually proved their abilities.

The initial work went unnoticed by the rural community who were still new to the CBR concept.

Through the guidance of the department and volunteers from outside, Elizabeth said the pioneer batch improved their lot through the training and therapy provided under the programme.

This opened the eyes of more people and with the support of local community leaders, she voluntarily embarked on an exercise to locate and register the disabled in the district to join the programme.

Within a span of six years, the CBR programme were extended to Uma Bawang and Long Bemang and monitored by those handling the CBR in Long Laput.

"So far, we have succeeded in registering over 200 disabled in Baram. But I believed there is more of them and it would take some time to locate the rest as this place is big, villages are situated far apart and in some instances I had to travel over 12 hours just to reach one village," said Elizabeth.

She is grateful to her understanding husband Edward Guatee, who runs a business in Miri but occasionally took time off to join her mission traveling deep into Baram.

The CBR success has stirred growing interests among the people in Baram to enroll their disabled family members for the programme and Elizabeth has plans for a bigger and better premises to accommodate them.

She said it would cost about RM500,000 to create the new facility and the cost of operating the PDK program could reach RM6,000 a month.

She was happy that under the National Key Target Areas (NKRA) of the Government Transformation Programme, a special focus has been given to low income households.

Elizabeth said most of the disabled undergoing CBR come from low income families and they require assistances from the government.

She said through rehabilitation the disabled could learn sufficient skills that could be useful by them to secure employment or starting a small business.

"So my intention is not only to help the disabled in my area to be independent, but if possible after rehabilitation they will be able to help their families to improve the household incomes," she added.