By: Karen Heinicke-Motsch with Jana Maiuri

In October 2004, MIUSA training Karen Heinicke-Motsch traveled to Mali, to provide technical assistance to the Trickle Up Program and its local partners.  Trickle Up is one of MIUSA’s partners in the Building an Inclusive Development Community project, sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).  Over three years of partnership with MIUSA, Trickle Up has demonstrated a strong commitment to including people with disabilities.

Trickle Up Program focuses on microenterprise development, an income-generation strategy that puts small loans into the hands of poor people worldwide to start small businesses. Trickle Up set a goal that by 2004, 10 percent of grantees would be people with disabilities. In 2003 Trickle Up Mali achieved a four percent rate of inclusion; however, they also encountered challenges related to communication and mobility issues that needed to be addressed.

MIUSA arranged to work with Trickle Up’s Mali program to assess their situation and plan ways in which they could increase the participation of people with disabilities in their work. In the Timbuktu workshop, Karen met with leaders of Mali’s disability movement, field staff from Handicap International, Trickle Up field staff, and representatives of Trickle Up’s 12 local partner organizations.  For local expertise, Karen worked with Diakite Adama, a representative of Action on Disability and Development working in the region, to develop a two-day workshop to address these needs. Diakite had a deep understanding of disability law in Mali and he was very skilled at explaining that law and the role of people with disabilities in obtaining it.

The Mali training workshop was extremely successful.  Participants made plans for engaging with communities, disabled people’s organizations and civil society organizations to promote the rights of people with disabilities.   During three years of partnership with Trickle Up, MIUSA’s technical assistance has supported a solid shift towards inclusion in Trickle Up programs. In Mali, MIUSA was able to observe directly the impact of this partnership. Karen visited with and interviewed people with disabilities who are running successful small businesses started with grants from Trickle Up.  While in Timbuktu, she also worked face-to-face with Malian NGO’s, exploring ways to address barriers and include people with disabilities.

The Timbuktu training and MIUSA’s technical assistance visit to Mali were sponsored by USAID as an activity of the Building an Inclusive Development Community project.