4.4.3 Disability and PRSP
The first PRS rarely took people with disabilities and their interests into consideration. At the Consultative Group Meeting of 2002 (a meeting of donors, governments and the civil society) donors mentioned for the first time this fact. Later that year a DPO representative (from DOLASED) participated and spoke at the Poverty Policy Week. From then on, different DPOs and the umbrella organisation Shivyawata regularly raised their voice in the PRS process. They were notably successful during the review process, managing to obtain funds from the Vice President’s Office and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to conduct participatory poverty assessments (PPAs) and to organise consultations in 2002/2003. The objective of these PPAs was to collect the “voices of the poor” and to obtain specific information about the living situation of people with disabilities. The survey was conducted by Shivyawata and ICD in 21 regions across the entire country. The main result was that people with disabilities are among the most vulnerable to poverty, and that their problems are multidimensional. In the drafting process of the second PRSP (MKUKUTA), DPOs were invited at all stages to attend consultative meetings or seminars organised by the Vice President’s Office. They thus influenced the paper by first gathering data and then participating in the formulation of the final draft. Strong networking and lobbying were important throughout the process. For example, ICD, DOLASED and other DPOs participated in the NGO Policy Forum. They had good contacts with persons on decision-making committees. These contact persons provided information on the ongoing process and could speak about disability issues. The cooperation with the Ministry of Labour Youth and Sports/Social Welfare, which is responsible for disability issues, is especially notable.
To push the implementation of the PRS forward, the Christoffel-Blindenmission (CBM) and Tanzanian DPOs organised a workshop in September 2005 and invited a number of organisations of and for people with disabilities, as well as representatives from governmental and international institutions. The workshop was a major success, with an average of over 60 persons participating on each of the three days. One result was the launch of the "MKUKUTA Disability Network" in Tanzania, which closely follows up on the implementation of action points.
