World Bicycle Relief

Here's a simple idea making a big difference. World Bicycle Relief has donated 24,000 bicycles to HIV/AIDS caregivers in Zambia so that they can better care for their clients. For one man, this decreased his trip to see one of his clients from 5 hours to 40 minutes.

Update on Progress of Family Advocacy Group in Chawama

Recently, we received an e-mail from Fr. Patrick in Chawama. In the e-mail, he updated the progress of the family advocacy group that has been meeting at the church in Chawama. Here is an excerpt from Patrick's e-mail:

Special needs Chawama Group: first meeting- Friday 12 September. The turn out was overwhelming; I walked into that hall and was greeted by so many expectant and/or anxious faces of children, men and women, young and old with different disabilities. Ba Father for whom they had been waiting had arrived. That in itself was a honour, but also a huge challenge for me. Before going to Italy, I had began talking with a very small group of women who come out voluntarily after I had preached about the reality of a person with a disability in the family. The subsequent visit of the team from the USA had overwhelming results- hat off for all of you.

On that our first meeting, the one thing they all expected was to have their picture taken. It turned out ot be an exciting photo-taking session- I'll send some as soon as I can; still have problems downloading pictures from my camera.

I addressed the group briefly, especially checking their expectations and clarifying the misdirected ones. I emphasized on the the power of unity and recognizing that they are not alone in the situation, as well as the need to come out of the shame, suspicion and fear that often accompany any disability in the family.

There was also a parent from another parish who spoke to the group about her experience as a mother of a child with a disability and how she has struggled until she's able to stand up for the rights of her child, without fear or shame.

The group met again the following Friday; more came. Many still expected to have their pictures taken. I was not able to attend. The Home Based Care team addressed them.
Our task is to identify a core team that will work with Mathew and I and the parish executive representative(s) to draw up a program and orientation of our work.

It is obvious that such work demands a lot of consistency, time and energy. The parish team shows a lot of interest to learn and make follow up. I really do count on them as well as your support.

On behalf of Mathew and the whole parish community, I thank all of you- dzikomo.
Patrick.

Patrick also sent photos of the group's meetings:

Final Training in Zambia

Today we are in the process of conducting our 2nd workshop in Zambia. There are about 30 people in attendance. Unlike the workshop at Bauleni, we are flying through our material and had to add additional material for the afternoon.

As mentioned yesterday, Sister Agnes has the organization down to a science. Besides getting everything set up, we watched her actually cooking what ended up being an excellent lunch of fried chicken and other tasty morsels.

It’s pretty hot as well and we are sweltering in the classroom; but, we would be hot anywhere today. It’s pretty amazing how attentive people can continue to be in the face of this heat.

Beth covered collaboration and networking this afternoon within the context of person centered planning. She really did an amazing job. She asked for someone in the group to volunteer someone they knew with a disability. It worked really well to apply the principles to real life situations.

One of the big highlights for the group was listening to Lori pronounce the names of the participants as we handed out the certificates. They were given a choice of having someone from the group do it or for Lori to do it and Lori was elected unanimously! She really did a good job despite a few snickers here and there.

The end of the workshop today marks the end of our official work on this trip in Zambia.

Moving on to Livingstone

Today we moved on to Livingstone for the rest of our trip. The sisters in Lusaka gave us a nice going away luncheon complete with wine(although none of us felt we could drink wine at 11:30 in the morning!) and a cake and probably the best cauliflower ever. Most of the produce we have eaten on this trip has been grown right out in the yards of wherever we are staying and has been pretty awesome.

Livingstone looks a lot different from Lusaka. There are definitely more trees and hills and not as much smog. The breathing is a little easier. We are staying with the sisters again at a guesthouse called Holy Cross. It’s definitely the smallest of all of the places we have stayed. It is cozy and features a kitchen for us to cook in…a very nice novelty to have even if we don’t end up using it.

We stopped by Cheshire homes, the location of our workshop tomorrow. Sister Agnes really has things organized and the space for our workshop is really nice and comfortable.

Possible Collaborations in Higher Education

We had excellent meetings with the Zamise College (Zambia Institute for Special Education) and with the University of Zambia Faculty of Education, Department of Educational Psychology, Sociology of Education and Special Education. In both of these meetings we discussed possible collaborations between the University of Minnesota.

At Zamesi there is interest in using the College of Direct Support and identifying connections for special education textbooks and materials to send out to the special education programs throughout Zambia.

At the University of Zambia there was interest in a shared research agenda that would involve community organizations and perhaps a community intervention. Several faculty were present at this meeting and they expressed interest in working on projects that support teachers in working closer with family members and within communities. There was also interest in supporting students to conduct research and in reviewing and supporting these efforts. These faculty were also interested in connecting and collaborating with the Zambian leadership team.

All parties agreed to remain in contact via the internet and to look for concrete and specific ways to collaborate in the future.

Zambians Using College of Direct Support

It has been exciting for us to hear about how the College of Direct Support (CDS) has been used in the country of Zambia. Makela has been using the CDS and has completed two courses, Positive Behavior Support and Teaching Skills. She is a Principal at Bauleni and has reported using the information and skills that she has learned in the CDS courses to teach and develop the skills of her teachers at the boarding school and in her home based education program. She indicated, "I learned that when a child has behavior it could be because they are trying to communicate. That had never even entered my mind."

In addition to the use of CDS by the Zambian team members who attending the leadership training program in the United States, others are interested as well. The Lusaka Ministry of Education is likely going to set up a learning lab in their resource center so that teachers can access the College of Direct Support. Additionally, Zamise (Zambia Institute for Special Education) is interested in providing the College of Direct Support curriculum to the 120+ special education teachers that they graduate each year. Having learned about their
curriculum, it is evident that the College of Direct Support curriculum could be useful in many ways.

In a meeting earlier in the week we learned about the many needs that educators, families and policy makers have regarding disability services and issues in Zambia. These include working with families and support networks, basic values and attitudes toward people with disabilities, supporting children and adults with autism, working with children who have challenging behavior, transition and employment issues among many others. The CDS certainly contains much of this content.

We will follow up with our Zambian colleagues and begin registering new learners for the CDS as they are identified.

President's Funeral

Today was a national holiday due to the president’s funeral. So pretty much everything was closed and it seemed like pretty much the entire country was planning on spending the day in front of the television watching the proceedings. The funeral did pretty much last the whole day and when we ventured out in the afternoon, hardly anyone was out on the streets. Typically the sides of the roads are crowded with people and depending on the time of day, traffic is bumper to bumper.

Since we had some unexpected time off, we debriefed a bit about the workshop and what we have accomplished on the trip so far. There were some really positive connections made with the University of Zambia and we will most likely continue working on a research collaboration with them in the near future. A representative from ZAFOD attended our workshop on Tuesday, which gave us an excellent opportunity to interface with them again and begin to build more of a relationship for future work. Within faith-based organizations, we will continue to work with our established partners. One can’t underestimate what the sisters are able to accomplish here. We heard countless stories of sisters making something out of nothing.

We are really hoping to be able to work with Mikela Mukongolwa at Bauleni Street Kids Project to implement an autism classroom. Mikela already has some fantastic ideas about how to put this into action.

There are really a number of directions we could proceed with our work here and it seems as though we will easily be able to create a plan that satisfies research as well as technical assistance needs. Not surprisingly, Amy has a grand plan mapped out in her head for next steps.

Workshop Day

Our big event today was the workshop we were giving at Bauleni Street Kids Project. We really had no idea how many people to expect, but we ended up with about 75 people in attendance. We had a very nice mix of parents, administrators, and educators.

Advocacy and self-advocacy were our main topics for the workshop. Amy spoke about person-first language and valued social-roles. She showed a video called “A Credo of Support” and the reactions to that were interesting. One man was surprised by the line, “Do not help, ask if I need help and what help I may need.” He related a couple of incidents where he did not ask and the person was very offended. In one, he pushed a wheelchair across the road when the light turned green and the man in the chair was very angry and told him he had not right to do so. In another incident, he threw a quarter into the bag of a disabled woman because he thought she was begging. She became angry as well and told him, “I don’t need your money.”

Another facet of “A Credo of Support” that surprised people was the line: “see my disability as an attribute.” It had never occurred to a few people that a disability could be seen as an attribute.


Liz presented next about law and policy, Lori was up next with self-advocacy, and Beth ended the day with community organizing.

One thing we found out today is Africans love to get certificates for going to education workshops. Apparently, they even keep them in scrapbooks to show people. They are very particular about having their names spelled correctly…I think I rewrote at least 10 certificates! I will admit I had a great deal of difficulty spelling some of the names.

After the workshop, we headed back to Kalundu and had dinner with the sisters. They are always such a joy to be around and have been very gracious. I also have to give a big thank you to Nama and Mikala. They have shepherded us around Lusaka for a week now and organized everything flawlessly.

Today was a very full day of meeting with organizations and people in the community. So many, in fact, that we had to split into two groups to cover them all. Amy and Liz did the more official government and university meetings. Lori, Beth, and I went to meet a group of people with disabilities in Chawama at the church we had visited yesterday. The poverty and need is so great here that it is hard to know how we can make any sort of a difference. I felt a little selfish. Our main purpose for being there was to gauge what was happening in the poorer communities and how their needs were and were not being met. So, they really had more to offer us than we most likely had to offer them.

A couple of really incredible things happened, though. We found out that none of them had ever met together as a group and they indicated that they wanted to continue to meet on a regular basis. So, they have their first group meeting a week from this Friday. Organizing as a group is certainly one way to start to take back some of your own power and work for a better way of life. Also, there were some non-secular staff from the church there and they were so surprised at how many people showed up and they had no idea that so many people with disabilities lived in the community.

From there, we went to lunch at an Indian restaurant…which struck me as kind of odd for some reason. On the way there, we saw LOTS of military starting to gather around the area of the president’s funeral on Wednesday. Brother Joseph referred to them as “very serious.” I believed him.


Our last stop of the day was at an Organization called ZAFOD(Zambian Federation of Disability Organizations). It was very interesting and dynamic…which is a polite way of saying there was tension. ZAFOD is a self-advocacy organization and one of the ways they advocate is by using the court system to set enforceable precedents in the legal system. One of the gentlemen we met with made a comment about how little the church helps in advancing the cause of people with disabilities. He also mentioned that they were considering suing the church at some point and that offended brother Joseph greatly. He said, “How can you sue someone you have never even met?” He was very insistent that the church is an inclusive place. I don’t think it is as inclusive as he thinks, but I don’t think it is as exclusive as the representative from ZAFOD thought. In the end, these two groups need each other and the reality is that it would be very difficult to effect any sort of change in Zambia without involving the churches.