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Decolonizing schools: Women organizing, disability advocacy, and land in Sāmoa

ANESI, Julianne
2019

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In the 1970s and 1980s, Sāmoan women organizers established Aoga Fiamalamalama and Loto Taumafai, two educational institutions, in the independent state of Sāmoa. This article examines these schools’ support of students labelled as ma’i (sick), specifically those with intellectual and physical disabilities. Through oral histories and archival research, I show the vital role performed by the women organizers in changing the educational system by drawing attention to the exclusion of disabled students. I focus on the collective labor of Sāmoan women and their influence in decolonizing schools. In this regard, the women organizers used Sāmoan concepts of fa’a Sāmoa (culture), fanua (land), and tautua (service) as ways to redefine the commitment of the education system. This is a story about daring to reimagine indigenous disabled bodies and their futures through knowledge systems, theory, and literature.

 

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2019, Vol. 6 No. 1

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2018, Vol. 5 No. 1

2018

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Articles include:

  • Inclusive Education in the global South? A Colombian perspective: ‘When you look towards the past, you see children with disabilities, and if you look towards the future, what you see is diverse learners
  • Services for people with Communication Disabilities in Uganda: supporting a new Speech and Language Therapy profession
  • Frida Kahlo and Pendular Disability Identity: A Textual Examination of El Diario de Frida Kahlo
  • Health Information-Seeking Behaviour of Visually Impaired Persons in Ibadan Metropolis, Nigeria
  • Online Collective Identities for Autism: The Perspective of Brazilian Parents
  • Transnationalizing Disability Policy in Embedded Cultural-Cognitive Worldviews: the Case of Sub-Saharan Africa
  • Portrayal of Disabled People in the Kuwaiti Media

Services for people with communication disabilities in Uganda: supporting a new speech and language therapy professional

MARSHALL, Julie
WICKENDEN, Mary
2018

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Services for people with communication disability (PWCD), including speech and language therapists (SLTs), are scarce in countries of the global South. A SLT degree programme was established at Makerere University, Uganda, in 2008. In 2011, an innovative project was set up to provide in-service training and mentoring for graduates and staff of the programme. This paper describes the project and its evaluation over three years. Three types of input: direct training, face-to-face individual and group meetings, and remote mentoring, were provided to 26 participants and evaluated using written and verbal methods. The first two types of input were evaluated mainly positively, while remote mentoring received more mixed evaluations. Less positive evaluations were linked to factors including resourcing, cultural perceptions about professional roles and services, work patterns, power/status, engagement, perceptions of help-seeking, community recognition of the needs for services for PWCD. Findings suggest that participatory approaches, flexibility, reflexivity and open discussion with participants around support and work challenges, are important. Power gradients between white Northern ‘experts’ and relatively inexperienced East African SLTs, contributed to some challenges. Structural issues about degree programme structures and statutory bodies, provide lessons about the development of new services and professions in low-income settings. 

 

Disability and the Global South, 2018 Vol.5, No. 1

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2017, Vol. 4 No. 1 - Special issue: Disability in the Sustainable Development Goals: Critical Reflections

2017

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Articles include:

  • Editorial: Disability and the SDGs: is the battle over?
  • Entering the SDG era: What do Fijians prioritise as indicators of disability-inclusive education?
  • SDGs, Inclusive Health and the path to Universal Health Coverage
  • No One Left Behind: A review of social protection and disability at the World Bank
  • The capacity of community-based participatory research in relation to disability and the SDGs
  • Measuring Disability and Inclusion in relation to the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development

The capacity of community-based participatory research in relation to disability and the SDGs

GREENWOOD, Margo
2017

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The 2030 Agenda pledges to foster shared responsibility, recognizes all as crucial enablers of sustainable development, and calls for the mobilization of all available resources. It also commits to multi-stakeholder partnerships and pledges to be open, inclusive, participatory and transparent in its follow-up and review. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) equitably involves community members, organizational representatives and researchers, enabling them to share power and resources through drawing on the unique strengths that each partner brings. It aims to integrate any increased knowledge and understanding into action, policy and social change to improve the health and quality of life of community members. CBPR involves recruiting community or peer researchers, involving them in planning and offering them training to undertake interviews and observations in their context. They are also part of the analysis and dissemination process, and continue to work with local partners on advocacy plans and events after projects and research have finished. People with disabilities are actively part of the research process throughout. Drawing on relevant literature and current CBPR disability research in East and West Africa, this paper puts forward CBPR as a methodology that can enable community members to identify key barriers to achieving the SDGs, and inform how policy and programmes can be altered to best meet the needs of people with disabilities. It demonstrates CBPR in practice and discusses the successes and complexities of implementing this approach in relation to the SDGs. The paper also highlights findings such as the high level of support needed for community research teams as they collect data and formally disseminate it, the honest raw data from peer to peer interaction, a deep level of local ownership at advocacy level, emerging issues surrounding meaningfully involving community researchers in analysis, and power differentials. A key conclusion is that to join partners with diverse expertise requires much planning, diplomacy, and critical, reflexive thought, while emphasising the necessity of generating local ownership of findings and the translation of knowledge into a catalyst for disability-related policy change.

 

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2017, Vol. 4 No. 1

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