- Info
Program featured in The Register-Guard
"Facing the challenges of the world"
 By Joe Mosley
Published: Sunday, August 13, 2006 Ukei Muratalieva's mission has led from her home in Kyrgyzstan to the fir forests of Spencer Butte Park in south Eugene, where she was raised on pulleys Saturday and then dropped in a giant, arcing rope swing called "The Falcon." "It was fun," Muratalieva said, adrenaline still pumping several minutes after she was lowered to the ground and released from the swing's harness. |  |
"Like a bird," she said, laughing between deep breaths. "A very panicked bird." Muratalieva was among 30 disabled women - each from a different country - who visited Spencer Butte's Challenge Course on Saturday on the second day of the 18-day Women's Institute on Leadership and Disability. The event is sponsored by Eugene-based Mobility International USA.
The third-annual gathering is intended to help new and emerging leaders from around the world improve their leadership skills, so they can return to their home countries and improve the lives of other women and girls with disabilities.
"This is my 25th year of doing this, and I am in awe of these women," said Susan Sygall, CEO of Mobility International. "Just their sense of trying to make changes in the world." The women - from countries ranging from Albania to Zambia - have faced obstacles including cultural biases against both women and people with disabilities, Sygall said. In some of the countries represented, disabled women are not allowed to marry, have children or attend either public schools or universities.
Over the next 2 1/2 weeks, the group will participate in a series of seminars on strategies for addressing issues such as employment, health care, education, reproductive health, education and human rights. But on Saturday, the goal at the Spencer Butte ropes course was to work on trust and team-building in a variety of interactive - and occasionally exciting - exercises. "It's also like a metaphor," Sygall said. "About not buying into preconceived notions about what's possible." |
 | Don't try to tell Samia Al-sayed what she can and can't do. Al-sayed, the information technology manager for the largest hospital in Syria, has disabilities from the effects of polio. "But it's given me the power to do better, and to do more things," she said. "I don't want, if somebody looks at me, (for them) to look at the negative things." Al-sayed was twice before denied a visa to travel to the United States because of this country's tense relationship with her own, but said she was determined to make the trip and was successful on her third attempt. "It is a dream for me to take a tour of the world," she said. "Somebody tell me if I visit America, I visit half of the world." |
Isatou Sanyang of Gambia came to the conference to become a better leader, and to learn fundraising skills that may benefit organizations that serve disabled women and children in her country. She serves as director of the female wing of the Gambian Association of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. "In Gambia, we only have one school for the deaf," said Sanyang, who hopes to help raise money for another school on land that has been donated by her government. She said - verbalizing her own words while signing to a sign-language interpreter - that Saturday's Challenge Course exercises taught valuable lessons about working together and relying on others, and she looks forward to the seminars ahead. "It's getting involved and getting active together (with others) that makes change happen," Sanyang said. Jenny Chincilla of El Salvador, who uses a wheelchair, said the lesson from Saturday's activities was clear to her. "I am doing things that I thought were impossible," said Chincilla, founder of a Salvadoran organization for people with disabilities. "But I am learning it is not impossible." |
|
