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Purpose: To explore ideas of the target population about a community-based intervention to stimulate physical activity in hard-to-reach physically disabled people.

Materials and methods: Semi-structured interviews were performed with 21 physically disabled people, and analyzed using thematic analyses. Findings were interpreted using the integrated Physical Activity for People with a Disability and Intervention Mapping model.

Results: The intervention should aim to stimulate intrinsic motivation and raise awareness for the health effects of physical activity. It should provide diverse activities, increase visibility of these activities, and improve image of physical activity for physically disabled people. Participants suggested to provide individual coaching sessions, increase marketing, present role models, and assign buddies. Potential users should be approached personally through intermediate organizations, or via social media and word of mouth promotion. Participants suggested that users, government, sponsors, and health insurers should finance the intervention. Self-responsibility for being physically active was strongly emphasized by participants.

Conclusions: An intervention to stimulate physical activity in hard-to-reach physically disabled people should be individualized, include personal support, and should include marketing to improve image of physical activity of physically disabled people. The intervention that fulfills these requirements should be developed and tested for effects in future research.

The ideology of Emancipatory Disability Research (EDR) reflected in the phrase ‘Nothing about us without us’, was first put forward in the 1990s. Although it aimed to place research control in the hands of the ‘researched’, i.e., people with disability, this rarely happens even today, 25 years later.

The Community Action Research on Disability (CARD) programme in Uganda embraced and modified the EDR approach, recognising the need for including people with disability in the research process from concept to outcome, and nurturing participation and collaboration between all the stakeholders in achieving action-based research. The research teams always included people with disability and staff from Disability People’s Organisations (DPOs) as well as academics and service providers. It endeavoured to generate and carry out research around issues that mattered to people with disability and their families. Leadership roles were assigned by team members. The objectives of the CARD programme were: (1) to fund teams to carry out action-based research on disability in Uganda; (2) to develop research and administrative capacity to manage the initiative within the academic registrar’s office at Kyambogo University; (3) to incorporate new knowledge generated from the studies into the ongoing local community-based rehabilitation and special education courses; and, (4) to ensure wide dissemination of research findings to all stakeholder groups.

CARD ran for 5 years, commissioning 21 action research studies in the field of disability and community-based services. This paper describes the process, presents the 12 completed studies, examines the extent to which the objectives were achieved and evaluates the experiences of the participating research teams, particularly in relation to the inclusion of its members with disability. It concludes with recommendations for future initiatives designed to promote validity, good value and inclusive approaches in disability research.

This paper shows how information, communication, the media and ICTs are powerful agents of change, how they can give 'voice' to the poor and contribute to more sustainable development, but it also emphasises the need to support and strengthen communication processes used by poor and marginalised people who already face many barriers to receiving information, and to develop the skills and capacity of those people to make their own voices heard. It concludes by suggesting an agenda for action by policy makers, development experts, international organisations, non-governmental organisations and the private sector (including the media)

This paper looks at social capital in the context of migration. It challenges the view that critical processes of social changes such as migration undermine and weaken social capital assets. It shows how transnational networks are strengthened and maintained, and social norms enhanced and replicated as a coping strategy in times of social changes. The paper focuses in particular on family ties, ethnicity, gender, household, care and provision. Some of the conclusions may be applied to other contexts, such as emergency situations, conflict situations and contexts of particular hardship

“This report evaluates the Angolan mine risk education activities carried out by Handicap International in the Huambo Province of Angola between November 2003 and May 2005. Its aim is to draw on lessons that can be applied to future mine risk education projects”