My trip to Thailand was absolutely worth it! For one week I had the opportunity to meet incredible women with disabilities who are making a difference in their communities, as well as omen who really want to learn how to make things happen in different parts of Asia.
Seminar
I went to Nonthaburi, Thailand, to attend the Regional Leadership Training Seminar of Women with Disabilities, sponsored by The Nippon Foundation. For that one week, June 20-24, 2002, we shared our different strategies, concerns, dreams, and frustrations. And by the end of that week we had made a definite plan to work together, and to network, in the future. Individually we may be strong; together we will be invincible.
I especially want to thank my friend and wonderful activist and organizer of the event, Venus M. Ilagan, Regional Chairperson of Disabled People International (DPI) of the Asia-Pacific Region and Founder of Katipunan Ng Maykapansanan sa Pilipinas (KAMPI), which is a big network of Rehabilitation Centers led and organized by people with disabilities in the Philippines. I also want to thank the local DPI team lead by Mr. Topong Kulkhanchit, and my new friend and interpreter, Supattraporn Tanatikom. Accessibility was not an issue thanks to their hard work.
My travel expenses were paid out of the professional development fund of my New Voices Fellowship, and the organizers of the training, KAMPI and DPI Asia/Pacific, provided housing and some meals. In addition, with a donation from Adele Gorelick, a long-time supporter of Whirlwind Women, in the name of her late friend, Felice S. Greene, and with a major gift from the River Road Unitarian Church in Bethesda, Maryland, Whirlwind Women was able to buy a power chair for Mai Khun, a youthful quadriplegic woman who lives near Bangkok and wants to work in her community to improve the lives of her peers with disabilities. I am very grateful for all the support I received.
UN Leadership.
A guest from the UN, Penny Judith Price from the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) Disability Program, spoke to us and talked about the results from the first decade of the global effort to equalize opportunities in Asia for people with disabilities (PWD), and she spoke of the new challenges for the second decade—to begin in 2003—that carries with it a second opportunity to achieve the goals articulated during the first decade.
Ms. Price asked us to write her a letter to spell out everything we wanted the second decade’s effort to include, so on the following day each participant spoke to the issues of concern to PWD, especially women, in her home country. We discussed all the issues and put together a letter that was given to Ms. Price two days later. This was my opportunity to educate my peers about the importance of the quality of the technology made for people with disabilities and that was included in the letter.
Seminar members were invited to observe during a meeting of officials from the UN, including some from the UN’s International Labor Organization (ILO). We watched and listened as the officials discussed and brainstormed together, covering all the issues and plans of actions that will be recommended to Asian countries in the upcoming decade.
Quality Control for PWD Equipment.
For me, the highlight of the Seminar was that I was able to talk about Whirlwind Women’s active concern, wherever we work, to advocate pushing governments to implement quality control standards for equipment that is produced worldwide for use by PWD. The ILO representative, Debra A. Perry, Senior Specialist in Vocational Rehabilitation, was especially interested to learn more about what we mean by “quality control standards” and also more about what a huge difference the quality of equipment can be to individual PWD. Ms. Perry said she would spread the word about the importance of enforcing quality control.
Disability Programs.
We visited several programs for PWD, including the National Organization for the Deaf (in Thailand), and two organizations working for blind people. The first was founded and is managed by blind people themselves. The second, Sampran Rehabilitation & Vocational Training Center for Blind Women, is run by nuns and is very restrictive in its clientele. Its rules permit only “Blind female(s), age 15 and up, not multi-handicapped, with no infectious disease, and having a parent or guardian” while she is in the Center.
We found these rules to be a perfect topic for discussion among ourselves the following morning. Many participants accepted the principle that they did not want to be discriminated against, but that day we thought about the many times we discriminate against people whose disabilities are different from ours. This is an age-old, very bad habit around the world and one that is taking a long time to illuminate and stamp out.
Visit to Ratchasuda College
As a further illustration of limitations on PWD among themselves and in the wider community, we visited the huge Ratchasuda College (we would call it a university) in Nakornpathom. Inside the College, in a separate, accessible building, there is the Center of Excellence on Access to Technology for Persons with Disabilities, sponsored by the International Center for the Advancement of Community Based Rehabilitation and the Canadian International Development Agency. Disabled students are offered scholarships, free tuition, and accessible housing. We learned that in this university, PWD may get Master’s and doctoral degrees, but the graduates’ choices of curricula and their future options are severely restricted.
PWD cannot choose what they want to study. They are accepted into programs depending on their own disabilities and upon graduation can be employed based only upon those disabilities. For example, someone who is a quadriplegic will be accepted into a program to become a counselor for other people who are quadriplegics. But if that student wished to study law or administration, s/he would not be accepted for that program, only for the program for quadriplegics.
Assistive Technology under Glass.
While at the university I talked to a student wheelchair rider. She was using a heavy, hospital-type chair and I asked her if she has access to information about wheelchair use, or to different types of wheelchairs, etc., and her answers were uniformly “No, never heard of it.” There is an exhibit on Assistive Technology covered with glass. Some students hear about Assistive Technology, but no one knows where to find it in Thailand.
100 Wheelchairs a Month, But…
A second high point of my Thailand adventure was to visit the wheelchair factory of the Thai With Disability Foundation just outside Bangkok. Although seven out of the ten employees are disabled, the factory produces wheelchairs of very poor quality and of a terrible design. I visited each area in the factory, listening to the production manager, who is a quadriplegic, and to the designer/technician, who rides a hospital-style chair but with adaptations that make it kind of sporty. I found that overcoming the language barrier turned out to be easier than I thought. By signing the things I wanted to talk about and with the little English knowledge of the production manager of the factory, the designer/technician and I were able to carry on the following conversation:
Contact Alecia Contreras with any questions.
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