Equality-based Community Support And Training

ECSAT was invited by Caritas to present a one day training about ‘How to include disabled people into the community’ to people living in five fishing villages centered round the Raphael Community Centre at Mukkothoduwawa in the North Western Province.  Five trainers made the long journey from Galle and were expecting to do a presentation to eighty parents with disabled children and twenty parents of non-disabled children.  Unfortunately, many people were unable to attend due to the start of the fishing season.

Twenty-nine people gave the ECSAT trainers their full attention and very quickly a strong rapport developed enabling the trainers to use interactive presentations for raising awareness of different levels of disability.  Ladies had great fun trying to do their hair with one arm behind their back, they readily shared things they could and could not do, for example ‘I can cook fish but I cannot catch them’ and worked in friendly groups to discuss feelings about being ignored due to a disability.  Each group leader gave a confident summary of their group’s discussion to the rest of the participants.

ECSAT presented types of disability using non-medical and medical terms such as ‘cannot walk’ and ‘cerebral palsy’; ‘unsocial behaviour’ and ‘autism’.   Ways of including disabled people were demonstrated starting with a group activity which showed different ways of greeting people using body language, facial expressions and gestures and the range of emotions each one produced.

Many parents shared their personal experiences of disability with the ECSAT trainers and we all felt a future training session about more ways of including disabled people into the community, developing their daily living skills and social skills and the role of parents to help with inclusion, would be beneficial.   The training session was from 9am to 2pm, finishing early so the ladies could help with the fishing catch.  It was agreed that more people would be able to attend a training session if it was held in the non-fishing season.