“Nothing About Us Without Us”

Once again, I had an oppurtunity to be involved in a training in Bangkok which was organized by APCD and JICA. It was a little bit different from the first training that I had attended. This time, the participants of the training were not only people with disabilities but also people without disabilities whom are workers of Community Based Rehabilitation programs in the Asia Pacific Region.

As a Sign language interpreter for Fachri Siradz from Sehjira Foundation and as a representative of Gempita (Sehjira’s partner),  I have gained more knowledge about the importance of working with and in the community level. Why in the community? Because sometimes we forget that we are all belongs to a community and this way of thinking make us tend to make plans with a very high expectation, such as : changing the rules and changing this world. But in order to achieve it, we often neglect the steps that we should have taken to achieve our big goal.

Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) believes that in order to change the world, firstly and more importantly we have to try from a very basic level, grass root level, changing the mindset of our own community  and the people who lived in it.

I went to training on Disability, Gender and development in Bangkok on March 8- 21, 2010. The training was held in APCD (Asia-Pacific Development Center on Disability) building, it was supported by APCD and JICA. I was representing GEMPITA (as SEHJIRA’s partner) and also as a sign language interpreter for my friend Angkie Yudistia from SEHJIRA Foundation.

The participants of the training were representative of self-help organizations of persons with disabilities from countries of South East Asia, including Republic of Indonesia, Malaysia, the union of Myanmar, the Republic of the Philippines, The Socialist of Vietnam, and The Kingdom of Thailand. The objective of this training is to empower persons with disabilities as agents of change and to promote an inclusive, barrier-free and rights based society for all. From Indonesia, Sehjira Foundation and HWPCI Ternate-Maluku were selected as representatives from Indonesia.

Since the first day of the training, I was so amazed with the condition of the building which is being used to conduct the trainings and also as our accommodation. It is so accessible in every aspects for all types of disability, kindly refer to the pictures as I am so speechless to describe it in words.

They were so many positive things that I got during the training. One of it is how we perceive disability itself.