Empower people with disabilities

Peace and harmonious living start with individuals within our families, the smallest units of our societies. We need to stay together, grow together, and maintain a harmonious relationship with everyone as a basis for a peaceful society. However, harmonious living requires hard work, including constant reflection on actions that keep a healthy connection with the family as a larger unit. We need the ability to trust, support, and communicate our differences constructively and look beyond ourselves or immediate family members. We must provide security and a sense of belonging, making each person within the family feel important, valued, and respected.

These things cannot be taken for granted or assumed to happen automatically. I personally did not have the opportunity to experience a harmonious family life when I was growing up. My biological father thought that I did not deserve to live because of my disability, which I acquired at around three years old due to polio. I grew up with a single mother who no longer found her marriage meaningful under the threatening environment for her twin sons.

As a young boy with disabilities growing up in my local community, I had big dreams and ambitions to fulfill, just like any other children without disabilities. However, access to opportunities and local resources seemed out of reach for those with disabilities because the planning and design of the community infrastructure and programs had been configured as though persons with disabilities never existed. The education, health, and socio-economic systems were not accessible for persons with disabilities.

While the rest of the community members seemed to enjoy relative peace and progress, persons with disabilities were being left behind in all aspects of life, leading to abject poverty. I deliberately sought opportunities to bring the socio-economic conflicts facing persons with disabilities to the forefront. Eager to deepen my knowledge and skills in peacebuilding, I found an exceptional opportunity in the Rotary Peace Centers.

In 2021, I was fortunate to be selected as one of the inaugural cohort of peace fellows at the Rotary Peace Centre at Makerere University. There, I learned how to expand the concept of “peace” into aspects of personal safety and growth, human rights, and refugee and migration issues, with particular attention on local community participation. Through the fellowship, we put these skills into practice by implementing a Social Change Initiative.

I worked on a web and mobile-based application called Dasuns (Diversity Ability Support Network System) to facilitate access to professional support services for persons with disabilities. Although I personally experienced challenges in obtaining the support I needed to participate in the mainstream community, the need for intervention became even more prominent during the fellowship field trip experiences. Development partners complained of a lack of access to support services to accommodate persons with disabilities.

What started as a humble Social Change Initiative in the context of the peace fellowship at the Makerere Rotary Peace Centre has now grown to create such a big social impact in communities for the effective participation of persons with disabilities in their respective communities.

Small positive actions can result in large social impact ventures for peace. This is a great lesson to take away.

Ronald Kasule, [email protected]