Young Voices: Bringing the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities to Life

From the young voices website: Young Voices is a project of the Leonard Cheshire Disability Global Alliance.

It brings together groups of young people with disabilities from 18 different countries around the world. It gives an opportunity for them to share their experiences, learn about the UN Convention and their human rights. It gives them training in campaigning, advocacy and media skills to help them hold their governments to their obligations under the UN Convention.

The original idea for the Young Voices project came from discussions with groups of young people with disabilities, NGOs and development agencies in West Africa. These highlighted that young disabled people were a neglected group whose voices were rarely heard.

Starting with a pilot project in 2005, Leonard Cheshire Disability worked through local partners to support groups of young people with disabilities in twelve countries. This covered the last two years of the development of the Convention. As these young people became knowledgeable about the Convention, they began to understand how to use their voices to influence policy.

A highlight for participants in the early years of the project was the opportunity to attend the ad-hoc committee of the UN in New York, where they organised a side event. Their passion and enthusiasm reminded everybody deep in negotiations that the rights of millions of people around the world were at stake.

Three years on, groups of young people with disabilities have been formed or are being developed in the following 18 countries: Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Namibia, Swaziland, Botswana, Kenya, Uganda, India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, China, Guyana, South Africa, Mauritius, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and the Philippines. A network of effective advocates working closely with disabled people’s organisations and others in civil society has come to life.

During 2008 and 2009 the groups have been telling their stories through film. You can view some of their films on this site now and others will follow shortly.

Disability Arts Online

I stumbled onto Disability Arts Online website today and found it pretty interesting. From their site:

dao exists to showcase disability and deaf arts, profile artists and to offer informative critical evaluation, serving the development of disability arts.

dao is fuelled by disabled and deaf artists, performers, writers and musicians working across art forms with a passion for saying something relevent about disability and impairment. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes reflective, sometimes angry, often questionning and insightful, disability arts is a relatively new art form which has a unique perspective on the arts afforded by disabled people.

dao originated in 2002 as a section on Council England's website, given over to profiling disability arts events, organisations and artists. Over the last four years, with funding from Arts Council England dao has built up a vast body of discussion, reviews, interviews, profiles, blogs and resources including a chronology of the history of disability arts in the UK.

dao also performs a role as a tool for students, with many links to bodies within higher and further education. On an informal basis, dao frequently provides information and advice to students who are either on disability studies courses or researching disability arts.

I particularly enjoyed reading the blogs by Signdance Collective and their trip to India as well as learning about the band Heavy Load. Heavy Load is a punk band in which three of the members have a learning disability. They have also had a documentary made about the struggle for success also called Heavy Load. To see more about the documentary, click here.