Small Grants Awarded in Ethiopia
MIUSA has awarded four small grants to Disabled People’s Organizations (DPOs) and a Parent Advocacy group in Ethiopia as part of the USAID-funded Building an Inclusive Development Community (BIDC) project.
The small grants are intended to facilitate inclusive development, whether in existing initiatives, new collaborative projects, or by way of increased DPO leadership and advocacy capacity to promote the inclusion of people with disabilities in development programs.
Small grants have been awarded to the following organizations:
- The Ethiopian National Association of the Blind (ENAB), who will work to facilitate the inclusion of people with visual impairments in alternative education. Their project will focus on producing training manuals and conducting training for their partner organization, PACT Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian National Association of the Deaf (ENAD), which will provide training on inclusive project development, with particularly focus on inclusion of people who are deaf. The project, which will be carried out in collaboration with Canadian Physicians for Aid and Relief (CPAR- Ethiopia), will include workshops on topics such as disability rights, accommodations for people who are deaf, disabled women’s issues, and inclusive HIV/AIDS services. In addition, ENAD plans to produce educational material and hold trainings on inclusive development for local government staff, NGOs, Community-Based Organizations, and disabled members of the community and their families.
- The Ethiopian National Association on Intellectual Disability (ENAID), which is a Parent Advocacy group that plans to focus on community education on the rights of people with intellectual disability. They plan to hold workshops for the general public, produce informational material on disability issues, and form committees at the local level. ENAID’s project partners are Oxfam Canada and ASCO (Ashten Children Support Organization).
- The Ethiopia Centre for Independent Living (ECIL), which will partner with the National AIDS Resource Center (NARC) to provide people with disabilities with access to HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. ECIL’s project will produce monthly newsletters and radio programs to educate the general public, in addition to holding regular meetings with USAID/Ethiopia Mission staff to facilitate inclusion of persons with disabilities in their programs.
The small grants form an integral part of MIUSA’s USAID-funded Building an Inclusive Development Community (BIDC) project. MIUSA is excited about supporting these important initiatives and looks forward to seeing progress in inclusive development as the small grants projects are implemented over the next six months.
Click here to see a slide show from MIUSA's recent visit to Ethiopia.
