Email : cbrs@mail.com.np
CBRS or Community Based Rehabilitation Service, is a Non Government Organization that works with physically disabled people and their families and communities. It was registered in 1995 and works in two districts of Nepal.
In short, what CBRS does is "Helping disabled people to help themselves".
At the end of 1999 CBRS ran a pilot training for teachers who had or would soon have, disabled children in their classes or schools. It was organized in collaboration with His Majesty's Government, and the main topic was about physical disability. The Government is arranging courses about other types of disability with other organizations.
Among the objectives of the training were:
- Changing the role of the teachers to be resource persons for the
child, their school and local community.
- Changing the community attitude
towards disability and disabled people.
The training included the following activities:
- Topics such as :
- Social attitudes,
- how to contact and refer to local resources
and experts.
- relevant education issues in the classroom .
- Practical experience in handling the children and discussion with them.
- Inclusion of key stakeholders involved: the pupils, families, teachers and Project staff.
- A problem solving approach with analysis of the local situation:
- problem identification,
- identification of possible solutions and
resources
- roles for each person involved
- developing of action plans
for implementation after the training.
- Collection and sharing of information from the community
- knowledge of other existing services and resource people
- visits
to other projects/institutions.
- Creation of resource networks with other disability and community development organizations.
- establishing partnerships
- building bridges between teachers,
pupils, community and organizations.
Emphasis was also placed on the implementation of the training in the
community afterwards, with application of skills and knowledge.
Follow up
visits by project staff helped the teachers and families/pupils to evaluate the
action plans and also to identify reason why activities had not been done, as
well as looking for new solutions. Thus the problem solving approach was used
in the follow up as well. A significant finding of the follow up visits was the
teachers reporting their own changes in attitude toward disability and disabled
pupils, and that most of them had been active in implementing the training
within their schools.
General Outcomes we have seen are:
- increased and improved inclusion of disabled children in the ordinary
mainstream schools.
- good cooperation with the Ministry of Education
-
utilization of local resources for children with extra needs
- development
of the training curriculum
- increased support of the community people
- improved support to the teachers and pupils in the system
Future goals are to:
- continue to train teachers in government, and
later private schools.
- share the curriculum widely to enable other
organizations to do the training.
- continue to cooperate with the Ministry
of Education in the policy of inclusive education and teacher training.
In summary, the pilot training was successful in widening the role of the teachers, in giving them more support networks as well as skills and knowledge, in improving the education of the disabled children (and their peers!), and also in widening the role of CBRS NGO in providing this training in conjunction with the Government.
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