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Gaoua is a small town in Burkina Faso and the Gaoua network is made up of disabled people’s organisations including a group specifically for disabled children.

The children’s group was formed in 2003 after ADD International began working with the other groups on the importance of including disabled children. Through meetings and workshops, ADD helped the network to establish the link between the challenges they face as adults with the discrimination they faced as children.

Because of their disabilities many disabled children rarely socialise outside of their homes. So for them, meeting independent disabled adults gives them positive role models and a vision of what they can achieve as disabled people.

The children’s group hold their own meetings and identify activities they would like to develop. A favourite activity is the theatre group that give performances in the community to raise awareness of the problems faced by disabled children and how they can be overcome.

As the confidence of the network grows ADD will help them to use their experience to campaign locally to improve opportunities of all disabled children.

So for the first time, disabled children in Gaoua have a voice!

Guillaume is deaf. He was the first child to become a member of the local disabled people’s organisation in Gaoua. He went to the group to ask for help with materials so he could go to the local mainstream school and learn to read and write.

Guillaume was one of only three children invited to a workshop at the Burkinabe Children’s Parliament where he learnt about child rights and the issues that directly affect them such as child trafficking. When he returned, he had in his pocket a very carefully folded copy of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. He now uses this to teach other disabled children in the group about their rights. Guillaume said:

“As a disabled child, if you can’t go to school things will be harder for you than for other children who aren’t disabled, because you can’t do as many things”.