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Perspective
28 March 2017

AbleChildAfrica: Giving the world's largest minority a chance - and so can you

Region:
Middle East & Africa, Asia-Pacific
Managing Editor
Around 15% of the global population are disabled. Of those, approximately 80% live in developing countries and 150 million are children. TXF caught up with Jane Anthony, executive director of AbleChildAfrica, with which we are very proud to have a partnership, to find out more about the charity's vital role in Africa.

Ever since our first conference in Paris in 2013, TXF has been a proud supporter of AbleChildAfrica, an organisation working exclusively with disabled children in Africa, and advocating for the needs of the world’s largest minority.

This week, TXF travels to Kenya for TXF Africa 2017. As our events portfolio has grown, so have our fundraising ambitions and the strength of our charity partnership. Shikuku Obosi, the Chair of the African Advisory Council for AbleChildAfrica, will be speaking at the conference about the charity’s regional programmes, including those in Kenya.

Projects include early development centre, Little Rock, which aims to provide an inclusive educational base for local children. The day before the conference, representatives from TXF took clients to visit Little Rock to see how funds they have helped raise are supporting vital work.

And next month, TXF's Managing Director Dan Sheriff  will be running the London Marathon in support of AbleChildAfrica, aiming to raise £2000.To help him reach his target, please see his fundraising page. Any donations will be gratefully received and go directly to helping some of the world’s must vulnerable.

To prepare, Dan wanted to learn more about changing the narrative around disability. He spoke with charity’s Executive Director, Jane Anthony to discuss its work with in-country partners, future ambitions, and the difficult climate for charities in the UK at present.

Trade & Export Finance (TXF): Could you outline AbleChildAfrica's focus?

Jane Anthony (JA): AbleChildAfrica is a UK registered organisation but we work exclusively with children with disabilities in Africa and their families.

Children with disabilities are part of the largest minority in the world and they are one of the least served, marginalised and left behind groups. We are the leading UK organisation specifically focussed on that. So it’s a very niche area but there is tremendous need.

Primarily, we work with local partners on the ground to deliver direct services - things like education, healthcare, sports, entertainment, all for children that may not get out of the house without our support; and that’s primarily in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda at the moment.

TXF: What would you describe as your key achievements to date?

JA: The biggest achievement for me is when you go out and you actually see the children in school for the first time. You see parents able to go to a job and make some income to support their family as a result of this. Last year alone we reached over 8,500 children, which is tremendous growth given the challenging environment charities have faced over the past few years.

We were founded in 1984, so over that 30-year period there have been a lot of achievements and I think the fact that we are able to see that growth and able to see more and more children out of their homes, into community activities, into programmes, as a result of our work, is huge.

I think the other big achievement is that on the global stage the world is starting to pay attention to children with disabilities. We’ve been a huge part of that movement and a consortium of organisations trying to make sure that their voices and their messages stay as global priorities. Seeing the global goals for 2030 come out and prioritise disability for the first time gives us hope that we are on the right track and more children’s lives will be changed.

TXF: Can you describe some of the projects that you have worked on recently with your local partners?

JA: In Uganda we work with a local organisation called the Uganda Society of Disabled Children (USDC).

We are just in the process of scaling up what was a three-year pilot for a further 5 years. It’s called the Child to Child project for inclusive education and sees us working directly with children that are already in school to go out into their communities and identify children with disabilities that are out of school.

We identify the reasons for this by conducting meetings and brainstorming sessions with the children themselves and their teachers about why the children aren’t reaching school. We discuss what they can do to help the others get there, and start working with families to make that happen.

Once at school, the project works to enable teaching, training and government support, provision of direct services - things like wheelchairs and hearing aids - to make sure that once they are in school, they can learn.

But getting over the attitudes that prevent them from coming in the first place - which often has to do with educating parents, gaining their acceptance and the teachers’ willingness to teach them; that’s all combatted by the children themselves in the school. Children don’t have prejudices, they learn them. So to start working on acceptance at a really young age and try to encourage all children to learn and play together is really quite exciting.

Another project we have in Kenya, alongside our partner Action Network for the Disabled (ANDY), uses a totally different method to get children into school.

It’s a sport project featured on BBC Sport Relief last year. The project uses sport as an avenue into school by having children who are out of school come to sports sessions at the end of the school day.

So the sporting session ensures they come to school and then learn that transition into the classroom environment - participate in the activities, meet their friends, get used to the teachers and vice versa, and then slowly make the move into being in school for the rest of the day. It really increases their self-confidence and when they do come to school, they have that starting point, which makes all the difference.

TXF: You mentioned that the charity sector is facing a few challenges. Are you able to talk about these, and how they relate to AbleChildAfrica?

JA: I think in general the world is facing a lot of challenges, which then have a sort of a knock-on impact on charities in general, particularly small organisations like AbleChildAfrica.

Across the last couple of years we’ve seen public confidence in charities at an all-time low, as a result of some of the major news stories related to big charities that had some poor practiceassociated with them. That continues to impact all charities, however well they are run.

Aside from this, you’ve got statutory funding in decline and you’ve got individuals less willing to give to charities at the moment. There is quite a lot of donor fatigue around. 

On top of that you’ve got huge and rapid changes in the regulatory environment, where we are all being asked to do more and to do better and to prove what we are doing around things like protecting the data of our supporters or making sure that our communications are appropriate and targeted at the people who want to get them. We need to make sure that we are doing all the finance and due diligence checks that we need to do to send funding overseas. We welcome many of these changes but it should come alongside a recognition that they require investment in our systems and our staff training.

So you’ve got increasing demands on pressure and less funding to make it happen and the consequence of that could be funding being diverted from where we need it to go most,overseas, to the children and families we support, to make sure we are able to meet those obligations. This is why it’s so valuable to us as an organisation when people like you take on events such as the marathon!

TXF: Can you talk about what challenges the children you help are facing?

JA: Those challenges are even more disheartening in some ways but fortunately we’re there to help them get past them. I think the biggest thing that most people don’t realise is that there’s over a billion disabled people in the world but over 80 percent of them live in abject poverty.

So, first and foremost you’ve got all the challenges that any child living in poverty in Africa would have - like insecure housing, food shortages, poor sanitation, all of that. And then you add on the challenges of also having a disability on top of that, maybe not being able to move around themselves, or not being able to hear, see, live independently. And then on top of that you’ve gotunderdeveloped service provision, poor infrastructure and huge stigma that still exists in certain areas.

That said, I think increasingly people are starting to realise that those more historic and traditional beliefs aren’t actually accurate. But what still permeates is abelief that children with disabilities cannot achieve as much and aren’t worth the time or energy it takes to make sure they have full and equal lives.

And when you step back and think about it, you can actually empathize. If a parent hasfour children and they can only afford the school fees for one, and they think one of them has the chance to reach adulthood and be a productive member of society and give back to their family (as can be traditional in many parts of Africa), then the other children aren’t going to get given the same opportunities. And sometimes it’s purely borne out of the difficult choices that families have to make as a result of circumstances. 

So, all of those things compound, creating the situation that we are trying to do something about – helping children and their families, by giving the opportunities to the kids and by helping their families make more sustainable income and lives.

TXF: Finally, what are the longer term ambitions for AbleChildAfrica?

JA: We have a lot of plans.

First and foremost, we are trying to reach two more countries in the next one to two years, depending on funding. We need to do that in a slow and measured, deliberate way - but we’ve got a call for new partnerships out over the last six months and we’re currently vetting some organisations that we might be able to work with.

This year we are starting working in Rwanda for the first time, so that was a big achievement. We hope to take that learning and that model, and reach more kids in other countries. That’s probably one of our biggest ambitions.

Another one is we’re very honoured to have our Youth Ambassador, Anthony Ford Shubrook be appointed as a UN Young Leader for the Sustainable Development Goals this year. So we have big ambitions to support him - he is one of only seventeen in the world. We want to help him spread the message around disability rights and inclusion. He is a young disabled activist himself and he is the only UN Young Leader that has lived experience of disability. We want toget behind him and share that message with more people. 

Finally, we continually strive to improve ourselves and want to see the organisationable to be that best practice sustainable organisation that we have every ambition of being.

TXF: Jane, thank you very much for your time.

If you would like to find out more or get involved, please go to http://www.ablechildafrica.org

 

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