July 22nd 2008: Report from the field - RPDG group

Rehabilitation Project for Persons with Disabilities and their family

There are many challenges that persons with disabilities (PWDs) and their families face in their daily lives due to lack of awareness, insufficient support and opportunities in the community. These challenges have been multiplied with extreme suffering after the Cyclone Nargis – losing loved ones, housing, mobility aids (wheel-chairs, crutches), and shops, etc. On top of such losses, with limited physical mobility and access to resources, many had fallen into depression.

There are many needs but right now, we are focusing initially on their housing need which was assessed as “living under extreme condition”. During this month, we have supported RPDG group in their effort to rebuild 11 houses for 11 PWD families in Yangon Division (Dhala, Hlaing Tha Yar, Insein, Mayangone, Shwe Pyi Tha Townships). With five small teams, construction was completed with follow up action and final assessment on 17 July. The total cost was $2,300. The project was a success despite many challenges that the teams faced such as heavy rain during construction and relocation of PWDs on muddy roads.


Outcome

Attached photos showed before and after rebuilding of the huts. Please check our photo gallery for more photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/moegyo2008/RPDG

The project has helped a great deal to eleven PWDs families.

- Improved their living condition with a proper housing during rainy season
- Helped reduced their worries and stress for their housing for at least 2 years

In addition to above obvious positive outcomes, many benefits have also been realized:
- Raised public awareness on disabled people in the community through the group effort and accomplishment of this project;

- Discovered more disabled people in the community so that they can be referred to the respective organizations for their rehabilitation and vocational training;
- Found out more on the needs of disabled people for future projects.

Appreciation

The PWDs and their families were very happy and thankful for their new homes. We would like to share their happiness with all of you. We sincerely thank our local group RPDG and our donors for the opportunity to help.

Thank you for your continued support!

In Yangon area alone, there are at least 250 disabled people (out of 550 PWDs in Yangon area-RPDG’s data) living under extreme conditions.