4.5.3 Disability and PRSP
Both Cambodian PRS documents made little reference to disability issues. Until 2007 people with disabilities and their organisations did not participate in the PRS process, and they themselves were not aware of PRS.
In 2006 Handicap International started to implement a project funded by the German government with the aim of enabling people with disabilities and their organisations to make PRS more inclusive. As the disability organisations did not know about the PRS, as a first step the project sought to disseminate information. Handicap International organised several meetings with main organisations of and for people with disabilities to inform them about the process and develop a strategy to influence the PRS. As a first step the "NSDP Inclusive Committee" was founded, with five main disability stakeholders as members. The idea behind this committee was to merge the efforts of the different disability stakeholders and for them to speak as one voice in the PRS process.
To start off this committee organised a workshop in January 2007 where different stakeholders from the field of disability and with a background in PRS came together. This workshop proved extremely helpful for spreading knowledge about the PRS among the disability stakeholders and for raising awareness of disability among PRS stakeholders. The NGO Forum took a remarkable initiative by inviting the disability stakeholders to contribute to the monitoring report on PRS implementation, which is annually prepared by the NGO Forum's member organisations and then submitted to the government and to donors.
In parallel to these activities, the project manager identified potential entry points for disability stakeholders into the PRS and compiled an analysis report. One identified entry point was the contribution to the monitoring report and to the report of sector working groups. As the link with the NGO Forum was enforced by these activities, members of the NSDP Inclusive Committee were given the opportunity to participate in training courses offered by the NGO Forum.
In addition, the project launched a call for proposals and offered micro grants to organisations at the local level. The idea behind this was that local DPOs should have the opportunity to implement small-scale projects linked to poverty reduction, thereby demonstrating at the local level how activities for people with disabilities could work.
