Approaching a Solution: Advocacy Goal
Overall Advocacy Goal:
The community acknowledging the reality and potential benefits of living with children with disabilities is critical to their education. Community acceptance and inclusion in this way would open the barriers of education and remove the negative stigma around disabled children. With community acceptance, the push for research and reliable data for children with disabilities in refugee camps can be started to eventually provide an efficient, targeted, and healthy inclusion to education for the children. Furthermore, global awareness for this forgotten group must occur to bring light to this situation.Target #1
1. Advocate and acquire funding for Special Needs Centers to provide children with disabilities protection and educational support. Through private donors and organization networks of the UNHCR, Able Child Africa, and the Global Campaign for Education, the community and donors involved in all three organizations (also all partnered with the JRS) can help support and fund the Special Needs Centers, but also push the conversation and honest reality of the refugee children with disabilities.Context: With a growing global presence of support for these children with disabilities, African countries will want to be part of this global normative and be in accordance with international standards and declarations. At the moment, African countries do not perceive this situation as a priority and are not held accountable for their current stance of passivity. With other humanitarian organizations and eventually the African Union's push, countries will start to contribute with reliable data, policy and service provision, and a variety of solutions of inclusion.
Recommendation: With the short term goal of providing children with protection and educational support, humanitarian organizations and international community can research and formulate a plan on how best to include disabled children into refugee schools and their community. Growing global awareness for this situation will allow people to put pressure on governments to accept the reality and start to consider the possible benefits of educating students with disabilities.
Target #2:
1. Secure permission and funding to hold Community Based System Dynamics (CBSD) workshops that explore key stakeholders' perspectives and identify places to promote inclusion in the community surrounding the inclusion and wellbeing of children with disabilities in a refugee camp.Context (Case Study): In conjunction with the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), a group that has been creating Special Need Centers that serves a wide range of disabilities and educational support, researchers completed CBSD sessions over the course of 2 weeks. Following seven stakeholder groups of JRS national staff, parents/families/caregivers of children with disabilties, JRS Special Needs Center staff, and community leaders, the researchers gave a group model building activity that negotiated references modes of how inclusion and wellbeing of children with disabilities changed over time, variables that might impact inclusion and wellbeing of children, and a casual map of interconnections of variables. This conversation allowed participants to discuss how parents can understand and ensure for the minimum level of wellbeing; with their safety leading to educational opportunities that can create greater independence for children. As parental awareness continues to shift throughout the community, the levels of comfortability and reinforcement of care will lead to a more seamless inclusion into schools.
Recommendation: Acquire funding to not only hold CBSD workshops but also build Special Need Centers. Continue the discussions with key stakeholders (caregivers, teachers, disability advocates) yearly in order to slowly remove the negative stigma surrounding refugee children with disabilities.