Counterpart
“Before the training I just felt like I was in a totally different world to everyone else.”
Imagine waking each day believing that you are the only disabled person in your village - in rural areas in Cambodia this is common.
Village Chiefs, used to discriminate against and ignore disabled people, now they are involved in the new “counterpart initiative”, and select two disabled people to become counterparts in each area. ADD Cambodia is really excited about the new initiative because it allows the work of ADD International to reach new areas and more disabled people. It has also had a huge impact on the attitudes of other members of the community towards disabled people.
The counterpart initiative gives disabled people control of how their self-help group develops and shows communities that disabled people are fully capable of taking on important roles within society. In one year membership of self help groups in Cambodia rose from 3,164 to 5,244.
Once selected as a counterpart, ADD Cambodia staff provide training to enable them to raise awareness amongst the community, local officials, teachers, council staff and religious leaders on the concept of disability and the rights of disabled people. They work independently but are monitored by the Commune Council. ADD supports the counterparts by providing regular meetings, a chance to share experiences and maintain a training programme.
The counterpart initiative has begun in six new areas of Cambodia where the 12 new counterparts are reaching hundreds of disabled people who thought that they were the only disabled people person living in their village.
Mr Sarin is a counterpart he used to be known in his village as ‘frog’ and faced serious discrimination after becoming severely disabled.
“I felt my whole life was hopeless. But after about 4 years I was given the opportunity to take up vocational training and managed to set up my own business repairing bicycles and motorbikes. But I was cheated on and became bankrupt so once again lost confidence in myself.”
After being selected to become a counterpart, Mr Sarin confesses: “At first I was quite afraid. I thought maybe I would be cheated again and had no confidence in my ability to do the work.”
Now he is really pleased he changed his mind and took the ADD counterpart training. Most of the discrimination he faced from villagers before has stopped and he now really enjoys working with the other counterpart, Ms Ourk, and all the disabled people in their district.
So far they have identified 128 disabled people and set up 12 self help groups. Mr Sarin gives an example of how his work has made a difference by telling the story of a disabled child who refused to go to school.
At first everyone thought the child was refusing because the school was too far away, but it soon became clear that the issue was that the school did not welcome him.
His family did not try hard to persuade him to return to school because they didn’t really think he could manage anyway.
It was Mr Sarin’s disability rights training that helped him make the difference because he was able to talk to the child's family and the head teacher, using his own example of what disabled people can achieve if given support and encouragement.
By providing powerful images and descriptions he was able to show that the child, no matter what the impairment, was able to achieve anything if given support - and the parents finally agreed that he could return to school.
Mr Sarin says that disability rights training has changed him, “Before the training I just felt like I was in a totally different world to everyone else. It was as though I did not exist, I would be totally ignored and could never hope to benefit from anything. I never received any opportunities. After receiving the training and understanding disabled people have rights and do not have to accept being excluded I began to change my attitude believing in myself again.
Becoming a counterpart gave me the official recognition I needed to feel part of the community again and better still, to feel I could contribute to changing the lives of others. Now I love the work I do with disabled people."