PREVIOUSY CALLED COMMUNITY BASED REHABILITATION

Community Based Inclusive Development (CBID) is a community development strategy that aims at enhancing the lives of persons with disabilities within their community. CBID was initiated by WHO following the Declaration of Alma-Ata in 1978 in an effort to enhance the quality of life for people with disabilities and their families; meet their basic needs; and ensure their inclusion and participation. While initially a strategy to increase access to rehabilitation services in resource-constrained settings, CBID is now a multi-sectoral approach working to improve the equalization of opportunities and social inclusion of people with disabilities while combating the perpetual cycle of poverty and disability. CBID is implemented through the combined efforts of people with disabilities, their families and communities, and relevant government and non-government health, education, vocational, social and other services (WHO).

It emphasizes utilization of locally available resources including beneficiaries, the families of persons with disabilities and the community. According to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, comprehensive rehabilitation services focusing on health, employment, education and social services are needed to enable persons with disabilities attain and maintain maximum independence, full physical, mental, social and vocational ability, and full inclusion and participation in all aspects of life (UN, 2006).

OVCI Our Family adopted the basic principles of Community Based Inclusive Development (CBID) by realizing in four foreign countries (three of the African continent: Sudan, South Sudan, Morocco and one of Latin America: Ecuador) specific action promoting the training of local CBID volunteers and the identification of persons with disabilities in situations of social distress.

The responses to the essential needs of these people are supported by interventions structured according to the health matrix dictated by CBID, the educational one that supports the inclusion of the child in school, the social one, the one on the means of subsistence and empowerment-sustainability.

Particularly important is the training process for the local CBID staff that is carrying out with interest, passion and willingness to raise awareness of the territory in which it operates towards people with disabilities.

Another fundamental tension of all CBID operators in the countries in which OVCI operates is to solicit the attention of local governments to the presence of people with disabilities and to the respect of the convention of the rights of persons with disabilities issued in 2006 and ratified by governments.

There are currently 160 local volunteers in the four countries

In addition to the inclusion of children with disabilities in normal schools (South Sudan - Sudan - Morocco - Ecuador) the direct involvement of people with adult disabilities in the work done in the most dislocated and poorest neighborhoods is particularly significant.

Over the years, more and more attention has been paid to income-generating activities (of which micro-credit is an example) to raise awareness of the multiplicity of factors affecting the quality of life of people with disabilities.

The involvement of expatriate volunteers in ongoing projects is a very engaging training process that certainly has significant implications for their professional, human and social training.

In summary we can underline that OVCI has developed over time some characteristics that today distinguish, as founding elements, its activity in the field of CBID and training:

- the activity has been adapted and adjusted to the context in which it operates and to the human resources that can be activated (volunteers)

- the beginning has always been with limited experiences that have then multiplied increasing places, beneficiaries, volunteers

- a great deal of importance has always been attached to training and awareness-raising with a view to ensuring that these are the keys to sustainability and continuity

- as far as possible, efforts have been made to encourage governments and institutions to pay more attention to the reality of disability, an area which is certainly to be developed, and to become stronger through our experience and our convictions; highlighting the results obtained in order to provoke positive reactions that guarantee the continuity of our work.

CBID: THE ORIGINS OF OUR HISTORY