In WILD workshops, site visits and team-building activities, disabled women tackle challenges, build skills and generate ideas for improving the lives of women and girls with disabilities. Read more about 15 unique workshops and activities offered to delegates during the WILD program.
Feminist Leadership Workshop
Women with disabilities must develop the skills and confidence to take leadership positions. However, there are some unique issues that women with disabilities face. Disabled women are often marginalized even within the disability community. Women with disabilities need to feel confident about their own power wherever they are working and if necessary they may need to start their own disabled women’s organizations. Women with disabilities also need to access the same professional development opportunities as nondisabled women in their community. In this workshop, delegates will explore their strengths and abilities as leaders, learn ways to enhance the leadership skills, and share information about leadership development opportunities.
Policy, Legislation & Advocacy Workshop
Historically, people with disabilities have struggled to achieve their rights often because they had not formed cross-disability coalitions or they lacked the necessary political organizing and advocacy skills. Disabled women need to be empowered to participate in the processes of developing and strengthening laws and policies that affect their lives. Most importantly, women with disabilities must be equipped with strategies for ensuring that laws and policies are enforced. In this workshop, participants explore effective advocacy strategies for enforcing disability rights laws and policies.
Gender, Disability and Development Institute (GDDI)
GDDI is a three-day retreat conducted during MIUSA’s International Women’s Institute on Leadership and Disability (WILD). MIUSA invites representatives from development agencies, funders and other professionals to meet with WILD delegates who are emerging and established leaders in grassroots disability organizations in Asia and the Pacific, Africa, Eastern Europe Latin America and the Middle East. This event is a unique opportunity to learn more about issues, exchange ideas and develop collaborative strategies for inclusive development with women leaders with disabilities from around the world. Read reflections on GDDI 2022.
Women’s Health and Wellness Workshop
create and maintain families. During this workshop, women will learn about the importance of self-care such as gynecological check-ups, breast cancer screenings, family planning, and birth control. Discrimination and preconceived notions about the sexuality of women with disabilities has also led to both misinformation as well as lack of information for disabled women. This workshop can be not only life-saving for the women participating, but other women and girls in their home communities with whom they share the information.
Self-defense Workshop
Unfortunately, women with disabilities face some of the highest rates of violence, as compared to both non-disabled women and disabled men. This workshop shares strategies on preventing violence – both from strangers as well as family members and intimate partners. The women practice hands-on techniques using their wheelchairs, canes, body language, voices, as well as their intuition, to give the women the self-confidence and skills that they need to confront violence.
Gender-based Violence Prevention Workshop
This workshop will provide a safe and confidential space where professionals in our community who provide shelter and counseling for women who have faced abuse, within or outside their family, can learn about how shelters and programs include women with disabilities. This workshop also provides a sacred and safe place where many women with disabilities are able to share for the first time their own stories of abuse or violence, and can get support from other delegates, as well as other professionals who are part of this workshop and are able to provide counseling. During this workshop, strategies are discussed on how women can go back to their communities, and either ensure that disabled women are included in prevention services, or create informal supports in areas where such services don’t exist.
Media Workshop
Women with disabilities have been, for the most part, nonexistent in the mainstream media. When they do appear in the media, portrayals are typically limiting and focusing on the medical model of disability, rather than a human rights model. This workshop will focus on how women with disabilities can “control” the messaging during interviews so that the story focuses on discrimination and social injustice, with an emphasis on how to make society more inclusive, rather than on “inspirational” or “overcoming a disability.” This workshop will also teach important skills such as writing press releases, using social media, as well as practicing “simulated” radio and TV interviews. Media has the potential to reach thousands of people and can change attitudes and behaviors very quickly when used in an effective way. It is a potent force for advancing disability rights and women with disabilities must learn how to use this tool for social change.
Higher Education Workshop
With visits to the University of Oregon and Lane Community College, women with disabilities learn not only how community colleges and universities accommodate people with disabilities, but also opportunities for disabled women from their respective countries to study abroad. They also gain needed information to create changes within higher education in their home communities.
Inclusive Education & Early Intervention Workshop
Education is the key for people with disabilities, especially for women with disabilities to be able to become leaders and active members in their society. Globally, literacy rates for women and girls with disabilities may be as low as 1%. In order to succeed in education, girls with disabilities need to have access to early intervention programs, so that they can excel to their greatest extent during their formative years. Disabled women leaders need to know how to motivate their communities using both legislation/policy and their leadership skills to ensure that people with disabilities are included in schools. In this workshop, delegates learn about existing legislation related to inclusive education, explore low-cost strategies that can be used to begin including children with disabilities in schools, and share parent advocacy and mentoring strategies to encourage disabled girls and women to reach their highest potential.
Sports & Fitness Workshop
In many countries in the world, women and girls with disabilities do not have access to sports and fitness. Sports teach essential qualities needed to be an effective leader such as team building, goal setting and communication skills. In countries where there are sports and fitness programs for people with disabilities they tend to focus on men and boys or elite athletes. It is imperative that women and girls with disabilities develop positive body image and learn how to have healthy lifestyles.
Challenge Course
The challenge course is one of the most powerful workshops, in which women with disabilities face their own preconceptions of what is possible. As they swing from a tree forty feet in the air, supported by harnesses and ropes, women with all types of disabilities realize that with the support of other women, they are far more powerful than they could have ever imagined. Team-building activities during the challenge course also emphasize the need for leaders to work as teams and how teams can accomplish almost anything. Years later, many delegates remember their life-changing moment when they confronted their fears, which has fueled them to also confront discrimination, speak out boldly, and create bold policies and innovative programs where none had existed before.
Yoga
Yoga is an excellent vehicle for enhancing body-mind wellness as well as building life-long meditative practices and contributes to promoting a healthy lifestyle. This workshop is crucial because it provides a vehicle for women and young girls to participate alongside their non-disabled peers and it is a low-cost easily adaptable activity in which everyone can participate.
River Rafting
Perhaps there is nothing more thrilling than having oars in your hand and maneuvering down a series of rapids, surrounded by breathtaking scenery and the many sounds of nature. By providing adaptive equipment, every woman with a disability can participate in maneuvering their raft, and experience a thrill that historically has only been available to non-disabled people. This workshop will also focus on the need for governments to recognize and ensure that any recreational experience they provide to their non-disabled citizens must also be provided to citizens with disabilities.
Swimming
Having a positive body image is essential in becoming a leader and having the confidence to confront preconceived notions of what is possible, and to have pride in who you are. This workshop focuses on teaching swimming skills at all different levels to women with all types of disabilities so that they can continue this recreational activity that promotes health and wellness. This workshop will also focus on the need to build positive body image in women and girls with disabilities–an increasingly difficult task–in a world where so many cultures focus on physical perfection. Empowering women with disabilities to utilize local swimming facilities and to advocate for increased accessibility is another strong vehicle to create change and inclusion in society.
Cultural Excursion
Accessible tourism is a fast-growing trend. This workshop is provided by taking a cultural excursion to the beautiful Oregon Coast, where the accessibility of beaches, state parks, and visitors’ centers will be highlighted. During this excursion, the delegates will learn about the history of Oregon, the role of indigenous peoples, as well as being rejuvenated by the beautiful sights and sounds of the Oregon Coast. And of course, delegates will have the chance to bond and share precious moments of friendship with other women.
