Project Description
With support from our Danish partners Dansk Handicap For bund (DHF) and Para-sport Denmark (PD), UNAPD secured funds to implement a two-year project titled “Building Strategic Alliance for Disability Rights in Uganda” which will focus on three thematic areas and Disability Sports being one of them. The project is to use a strategy of building a broad coalition of DPOs/CSOs in the above three thematic areas in order to improve the lives of PWDs. At the end of the projects, one of the key outputs from the coalitions/caucuses will be a United Disability policy on Livelihood and Disability Sports, among others.
UNAPD has piloted disability sports as a tool for mobilization, rehabilitation, organization and social inclusion. Sports have been found to be a powerful crosscutting self-help tool for personal empowerment, talent identification, exposure and for social recognition and inclusion. In partnership with Parasport Denmark, UNAPD, SIA and BISOU have since 2010 piloted grassroots disability sports in Uganda in four districts of Mubende (MRC), Busia, Nebbi and Kampala with over seven disability sports disciplines. There are a lot of successes registered with the community disability sports in the above districts ranging from talent identifications among PWDs, exposure, membership mobilizations, and above all “the Uganda Defence Forces´ Mubende Rehabilitation Center has institutionalized disability sports as a tool for rehabilitation, with a budget allocation”.
However, despite the several successes, there are also numerous gaps to be addressed; UNAPD has worked unsuccessfully to likewise attract the attention of Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health to adopt disability sports as a tool for respectively inclusion and rehabilitation of CWDs/PWDs and the disability sports experience is still limited among the DPOs, and at district levels due to lack of proper framework (e.g. disability policy) for mainstreaming the sport at different levels.
The above three thematic analysis motivated the design of this project for the DPOs/CSOs to work together in “an Alliance Building Spirit”
Project goal
Improved quality of life of Persons with Disabilities in Uganda through Alliance Building with DPOs, CSOs, private and governmental actors for physical accessibility, disability sports and secure livelihoods for PWDs.
Objective of the Disability Sports Component
- Promoting disability sports as a tool for personal empowerment and rehabilitation, organization and social inclusion at National and local levels by formulating a national disability sports policy and presenting it to the public, sponsors, parliament, and the line ministries for Sports, Health and Education.