Salvation for the Deserving - SFD 2.69

Motivation
Conducting motivational workshops in rehabilitation centres with an emphasis on becoming independent and productive in society.
Forming a National Disabled Association to focus primarily on the shortcomings in government and private workplaces, which are not handicap friendly. The National Disabled Association hopes to be instrumental in passing legislation, for fair representation of the disabled in Nation building from the village level to the National level.
Family Counselling.
Family Counselling is treated to be one of the most vital issues for the disabled. As the disabled live with number physical and mental problems including severe depression, they often lead a miserable life. The society itself behaves with cruel treatment. Usually they are ousted. So family is the key to help them grow. It is of course a true phenomenon for Bangladesh that poverty makes certain instability particularly at the family situation. As most of the families experience acute poverty, they have to face serious financial problems. This financial crisis multiplies disability problems.
The families need to understand the whole scenario of the country. They need to understand the very problems the disabled face. But most of the cases disabled are ignored and they themselves are thought to be problems. Hence, the disabled become unproductive. It is to be mentioned further that the disabled are needed to give opportunity to flourish their right potentials. The disabled remain idle and are not given opportunity to have jobs and eventually most of the cases they are compelled to have most disgusting profession ‘Beggary’. As such they turn themselves to be the real problems of the society.
SFD so that intends to create awareness among families. It is to be noted that family awareness leads the disabled to be the productive resources from a social problem. SFD likes to have the family counselling regularly providing with information regarding a healthier and productive life. Some case histories are presented. The most convenient ways for becoming productive are shown. Another important dimension is to obtaining basic information regarding getting services for treatment, training and employment are disclosed. The most traditional causes to get rid of disability are also discussed.
This family counselling thus can help the disabled to be the most productive forces of the country.
Advocacy and Counselling.
In view of the prevailing socio-cultural condition of our society, a strong advocacy is needed to combat “ignorance, fear and superstition”. The advocacy, inter alia, will include the following–
social mobilization and building public awareness about the persons with disabilities, their rights, their needs, their potential through personal contact, group interaction, meetings, seminars, workshops, rallies and campaigns and media.

In view of the prevailing socio-cultural condition of our society, a strong advocacy is needed to combat “ignorance, fear and superstition”. The advocacy, inter alia, will include the following– social mobilization and building public awareness about the persons with disabilities, their rights, their needs, their potential through personal contact, group interaction, meetings, seminars, workshops, rallies and campaigns and media.

Distribute up-to-date information on available programs and services to persons with disabilities, their families, professionals in the field and the general public including information on the disabilities, which are preventable.

Interaction among the relevant Government Organizations, civil society and other stakeholders through meetings and conferences on the issues of the disabled and motivate them to render all possible support and assistance for the disabled.

Development of consciousness among the disabled concerning the rights and privileges as citizens the country they live in. Instil in the disabled person a sense of self-respect, dignity, and about their utility in economic and social life.

Counselling program for the family members of the disabled persons will be carried out through community-based workers of the SFD to remove superstitious belief and faith.

This is a matter of regret that neither the Government of Bangladesh nor any other organization has taken any initiative to identify the number of disabled person. so we do not have any statistics about the number of disables persons in Bangladesh. According to the World Health Organization, about 10% of total populations are disabled in first world countries. By considering our socio-economic condition, it is easily inferable that the ratio of disable should be more than that of first world countries. This assumption suggests that the number of disable population in Bangladesh should be more than 1.5 Crore. The founder of SFD has proposed the following method of identiy the disable according to the category of disability. The method will be tried first in Manikgonj District. If the Venture gets well, then SFD will try to introduce it in National level.



Influencing and lobbying with the Government, Civil Society, local Government Institutions, local Intellectuals, Social and Religious leaders and other stake holders through personal contact, group interactions, meetings, seminars, workshops, organizing rallies and campaigns and through media coverage like Radio, Television programmes, Magazine and Newspapers.

To improve the situation the disabled people SFD will work in collaboration with different Government, Institutions, NGO’s, Schools, Colleges and Universities, National and International organizations working in the field of issues relating to the welfare of the disabled.

The main objective of this program is to raise public awareness about the disability issues, development of self consciousness among the disabled about their rights and privileges and to influence the service providers at Government and private levels to protect the rights and equal opportunities of the disabled persons. In a word ensuring fundamental rights of the disadvantaged group through pressuring

Government to ratify the Bangladesh Disability Act as per international standard to make the group environmentally friendly and acceptable in the society.

As Bangladesh people face severe malnutrition problems the Physical growth of the inhabitants of the country is hindered naturally. Notwithstanding this common problem, the general masses and in some cases the children also start smoking which is beyond doubt, lead them to the tuberculosis and some other lung diseases.

Further half of adult population carries TB germs and an estimated 70,000 people die of the disease every year according to government figure. More than 3,00,000 people aged between 15 and 45 years are infected with tuberculosis in Bangladesh every year. As the millennium development goal (MDG) suggest to reduce TB by half by 2015, SFD made an effort to provide support for lung diseases and aims to move towards campaigning tobacco free kids.

Among other health hazards breast cancer, spinal cord injuries and cardiovascular Accident are notable. SFD provides specialized treatment and counseling to mitigate these sorts of problems and also needs vigorous campaign for raising awareness on the issues mentioned. Further Childhood cancer has been also an area of concern in developing countries. Bangladeshi children with cancer and their family face adverse situations including inadequate nursing facilities. SFD aims to provide modern facilities to the child sufferers so that they can lead normal lives and the family burdens are lessened.

In most of the countries disabled people are considered as the unproductive citizens. They are denied even to have the basic human needs. SFD feels need for establishing a residential centre for the care, protection and rehabilitation of the elderly poor and helpless disabled persons. The aim of the centre is to provide opportunities to live and lead a carefree, happy, active meaningful life, which is respectful for the senior disabled people.

Beggary is a worst reality of the disabled people in Bangladesh. As they are treated as helpless and unproductive human beings, they are usually neglected for being employed. As they themselves do not find a suitable mainstream job, they involve themselves in beggary. Sometimes they are forced to do such job as some people use them as a business product. It is done because people remain kindness to them and donate some coins to them. SFD plans to provide effective training and job opportunity to them for stopping such kind of misdeeds.

Bangladesh is a country of more than 85 thousands villages and the major percentage, more than 90% live in the villages. As such we shall mainly focus that major portion of disabled organizations should be shifted to villages. SFD itself established its center in a remote village of Manikgonj District as a model so that it can spread throughout the country

Education-
A family is a safe haven for children because all support is given from family to children. But a poor family cannot effort to give even basic human needs for the children. It was shown some disabled children are deprived from family care even though the family is richer. But you will not get a lot of rich family as most people of the country stay below the poverty line. So in most cases if a children becomes disabled though from a rich family obviously very few of them get chance to develop as most family has also negative attitude about disability. Poor disabled children cannot get opportunity to develop rather than think to survive. For this reason though you see a lot of disabled children but they cannot sustain life due to lack or absent of life sustain components. For example food, cloth, residence and other intrinsic and extrinsic elements, which are very essential to survive.