Meet the design team.

Lived-experience Design.

Last year a group of women with disabilities from Ghana, Uganda and Tanzania worked together to decide how funding for women with disabilities should best be spent – and who it should be spent by. As part of the Disability Justice Fund for Women, these women – the design team – decided what the fund should focus on for maximum impact, based on their lived experience.

Based on the needs of the disability justice movements in their communities, they paid particular focus to those groups who have least access to funding and resources including marginalised women, those from rural areas, girls and older women. They designed the fund with care to make sure it is accessible to these groups.

Meet the design team.

Below, three members of the design team share their reflections on designing and fund.

Joy – Disability justice activist Uganda.

“As a woman with a disability, it was the first of its kind of being part in design of the project. It was an opportunity to interact with women with disabilities from different countries. I learnt that challenges of women with disabilities are similar irrespective of where they live or come from. The guidelines formulated by the design team are inclusive and cater for all women with disabilities including the most excluded.”

“It is very important that women with disabilities like myself to design the fund because I am aware of the challenges women with disabilities face and as a peer, it will be easy for them to participate and apply without fear. The grant will cater for all without discrimination, understanding the situation of grassroot women with disabilities.”

Beatrice – Disability justice activist Ghana.

“Being part of the design team was a great experience. It offered me an opportunity to learn from others especially those from different countries. It gave us an opportunity to remove all barriers which often act against women with Disability led organizations in accessing funding. For example, they do not deliberately encourage us to or have specific funding opportunities for us. Criteria for accessing funding are cumbersome which scares these organizations from applying.”

“I experienced real power given to women with Disability organizations and the design team to decide and provide solutions to our gender specific challenges. That is, all decision-taking was solely by the six women with disabilities who were representing their fellow women from our respective countries. Again, apart from the ratification of the African Disability Protocol, we were also given the chance to create other programme areas, vision and mission for the fund.”

“No person from ADD influenced our thoughts. It was solely our decision which enabled us to remove all the fears and challenges as well as areas of importance this fund should be used for. Moreover, having a specific fund for women with Disabilities led organizations will help address specific marginalized groups who will not be able to compete with mainstream organizations. We have very limited funding opportunities which continue to keep us in darkness and so ADD and other partners have restored confidence in us by creating such funding for women with Disabilities. There are about 37 feminist funding opportunities and even fewer for women with Disabilities which is a huge gap.”

“It is very crucial to give power to women with Disabilities and for that matter men with Disabilities to decide on their needs and practical ways of addressing them. By this, we are assured of addressing the felt needs of the people and encourage innovative and participatory processes. It gives us the opportunity to remove barriers and criteria biases which in most cases hinder our access to funding. Giving power to women with disabilities affirms the saying of ‘leave no one behind’ and ‘nothing about us without us’ which enable partners to know our priority needs and jointly find lasting solution to them.”

“Also, it restores confidence in both women with Disabilities and development partners as it will encourage interdependences from both parties. It promotes Disability justice by ensuring the visibility of the most marginalized who are more invisible in the Disability arena because of patriarchy, intersectionality, cultural and other prejudice.”

Veronica – Disability justice activist Ghana.

“It was a great and unique opportunity for me as a woman with disability to be part of a grant making mechanism that will meet the needs of women and girls with disabilities in my country and other part of Africa. This is awesome and has never happened before. I felt highly honoured to be given so much power to decide for a fund that will really benefit us as women with disability in Africa.”

“Importantly too, I was privileged to meet other women with disabilities from diverse cultures. I was exposed to new ideas and strategies which will go a long way to influence me positively as a Disability Rights Advocate.”

“It makes us own the process which makes it so much participatory and sustainable like the saying: “Nothing about us without us” is being materialized.”

“Designing the fund ourselves as women with disabilities offers us the golden opportunity to design a specific grant that speaks so much to the specific needs of women and girls with disabilities at all levels especially at the grassroot.”