Preparing for the Zambian Team

Representatives from Arc GTC, Fraser, Opportunity Partners, St. David's Children's Program, and the Institute on Community Integration met today to discuss and plan for the upcoming training of the Zambian Team. Dates that the team will be in the United States are March 28 to April 11. the training schedule is coming together for the formal training they will receive. Topics will include (but are not limited to): history of disability in the U.S. and Minnesota, core values of services in the U.S (valued social roles, social justice, empowerment, inclusion), overview of management and fundraising in non-profit organizations, employment and residential service, special education and early intervention, faith based initiatives and the role of church in service development and delivery, disability and arts, children with special health care needs, and autism.

The basic training methodology will include a combination of lecture, discussion and on-line training each morning that is focused on a specific topic. Each afternoon the group will then complete site visits that assist then in applying the information they learned each morning with the real world application in the afternoon. In the evenings participants will spend time at disability cultural events, civic events, organizational and parent events as well as learning about what typical American families do in the evenings.

Each partnering organization is now seeking volunteers to serve as host families for one or two members of the Zambian team.

More to come. Amy

Reflections on Zambian Trip

I have been home now and in the hustle and bustle of life here in the U.S. for nearly two weeks now. Not yet fully unpacked nor organized and caught up from having been gone. Yet, definitely back into the swing of work, home and American politics!

It is sometimes hard to reconcile the need I saw from every aspect of life in Zambia with the privilege we all have in the U.S. We talk about poverty and we talk about need but it nearly trivial when compared to a country like Zambia.

This weekend I had an opportunity (thanks Sandy!) to attend the Arc GTC Arcacdemy gala. It was a lot of fun and a huge success. Many people at that event were asking me about Zambia and I thought to myself that just with the money I spent on my outfit and my husbands suit we could have rented a building for the Hidden Voices School for nearly 12 months. If you took all of the money spent and raised at that event it is nearly unimaginable how far it would go in the right hands in Zambia. I am not at all saying we should stop having galas or that we should stop spending money - I am merely pointing out that there is much human perspective to consider when you think about the resources we have at our fingertips in this country.

I have also been thinking a lot about the intellectual capital we have. We take this for granted I think in the U.S. The number of people in the U.S. with and without disabilities who have become experts on this topic is amazing. This knowledge is so needed and so valued in Zambia. To give you perspective, I spent a lot of time with young men who were studying to become priests. They were working on degrees in philosophy, accounting many areas. They had no access to an on line library system. Imagine your children, yourself or your grandchildren going to college today and not having access to a complete on-line library system. For us, this is unimaginable. For most Zambians in college having limited access to library resources is the norm.

The children in the picture above go to school in a freight container that has had some windows cut into it. You can only imagine how hot it was. But, each of these children were pleased to have a school to attend. They walked for distances of over miles to get to and from school each day. Teachers had chalk boards and chalk. Children had small notebooks on which they wrote on every square inch of paper. Children with physical disabilities more often then not used adult wheelchairs and/or adult crutches that had been cut off. Custom fit - not on the radar of experiences for nearly all of the children I met.

We are a rich nation. We are have so much at our finger tips. Do we all really know, appreciate and understand this? - Amy