More than 10 persons living with disabilities in Honiara for the first time participated in an inclusive three days workshop which ended last Friday.
The workshop on media and Disability Inclusion was held at the SIBC conference room with the attendance of representatives of people living with disabilities, those from Disaster Management organisations, the media and humanitarian emergency response stakeholders in the Solomon Islands.
It was organized and funded by Oxfam in the Solomon Islands in partnership with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation International Development (ABC ID).
The workshop trainer was Dorothy Wickham, former SIBC journalist and women’s activist, and staff of Oxfam who conducted the workshop on disaster preparedness.
Dorothy Wickham highlighted the Oxfam’s AHP Disaster Ready plan aims to promote timely, accurate, inclusive disaster messaging by understanding the communication needs of people with disabilities and improving linkages and interactions between disabled persons’ organisations, media, government and other local stakeholders.
She said the goal of the knowledge-sharing workshop was to allow stakeholders to understand each other’s experience, challenges/ constraints, priorities, and needs in disaster reporting, response, and resilience.
Dorothy thanked the media; stakeholders participated in the workshop, representatives from the World Vision, Red Cross, the Oxfam in Solomon Islands in partnership with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation International Development (ABC ID) and participants.
“I would like to thank all of you who attended and our core funders who supported this workshop.
“We now understand disaster reporting, understanding disability inclusive messaging, establishing media guidelines and principles and determining best practice terminology for disability-inclusive reporting,” Ms. Wickham said.
“This training was successful as participants hear direct issues affecting people living with disabilities on their needs and wants in disaster scenarios,” she added.
Comment.
I am pleased the workshop was successful and supported by Oxfam and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
When it comes to understanding to the experience, challenges/ constraints, priorities, and needs of the people living with disabilities in the Solomon Islands, then I believe much more needs to be done way of a response to addressing their requirements. I have in mind matters such as access to premises for those that must use a wheel chair, those who suffer from hearing loss and impaired vision and especially those who have suffered the loss of a limb through surgery arising from, very often, having contracted diabetes.
In the recent past the Lions Club in New Zealand donated 6,000 pairs of re-cycled eye glasses following an appeal I made and many people became the beneficiaries of those glasses when they would otherwise have gone without due to a lack of money to buy their own.
In a similar kind of appeal, I asked the Western Australian Ear Science Institute if they could donate hearing aids to the National Referral Hospital’s Ear Nose and Throat (ENT) Department. The response was positive and a requisition form was sent to the ENT Department but then things went no further because it was decided there could arise complications in servicing any hearing aids to be donated due to a lack of capacity in the ENT Department for follow-up servicing and repair of hearing aids. It was my understanding at the time that the then Medical Superintendent at the NRH felt the hospital could accept the hearing aids and donor funding sought to build-up the capacity for surviving and repair work, but nothing materialized.
In respect to the many amputees at the NRH needing prosthetic or artificial limbs (and the number of patients having amputations continues to grow by at least six patients per week, the donated modular building to serve as a replacement rehabilitation workshop which I made a successful appeal for and donated to the NRH last September, with the funding provided by the SFA Board, sits idle until, I am told, funds are made available by the hospital management for an extension to be added to provide for a holding unit for patients suffering from mental disabilities.
While I very much appreciate the workshop for disabled person on their needs in time of disaster events, the more mundane and daily needs of the disabled community are not being addressed despite much talk in the past. I have very much in mind access, mobility aids, hearing loss and impaired vision and transportation.
Disability Rights are Human Rights.
Yours sincerely
Frank Short
