USAID hosted training on tools to protect the rights of people with disabilities in Pavlodar

GGIF grantee Public Foundation “Tandau” hosted on October 23, 2017 in Pavlodar training “Tools to protect the rights of people with disabilities through the appeals to the state bodies”.Training was held within the frames of the USAID program “Good Governance Initiative Fund”, implemented by the Eurasia Foundation of Central Asia with financial support of USAID.

Trainers Diana Okremova and Gulmira Birzhanova (Law & Media Center; Astana) informed the audience about a special program to mobilize civic activity among PWD with the aim to improve barrier free environment. Training was held in two shifts.

“Training is very helpful if someone has to appeal to state bodies. Now I know how to do that. I received very useful information. I recommend everyone to visit website “Accessible Pavlodar” as often as possible”, - said Saltanat Abdalinova, training participant.

As to another training participant, Alyona Stetskaya, workshop helped her to have answers to many questions. “Training was very useful for me. Now I know what to do if I’m in tough situations. I would recommend to host such training for people with restricted mobility in our city”, - she mentioned after the training.

Training program focused on the following issues: rights of an individual to appeal to the state bodies, law to consider appeals, ways of appeals delivery, content of an appeal, law “Access to the information”, etc.

“We should understand that a state body is not a truth in its final instance. Until we don’t initiate changes, there will be no any changes in our lives”, - said Diana Okremova, trainer.

The other trainer, Gulmira Birzhanova, mentioned that every single participant was very active at the training. “My opinion is that it is very important to host such trainings, especially for people with disabilities. It is a good opportunity for PWD to use tools to make an appeal, to have an access to the information. Many of the participants know their rights and laws but have no idea how to apply tools and have the process of appealing completed”, - said G. Birzhanova.

PF “Tandau” has been realizing the project “Accessible Pavlodar” for almost two years. Project’s goal is improving availability and quality of state services for people with disabilities. The point of this project is that the public organization develops an electronic version of “Accessible Pavlodar”. The website www.dospav.kz  helps physically disabled people and people with limited mobility to become integrated into society.

Apart from that "Tandau"is creating a mobile application “Accessible Pavlodar” for people with disabilities and limited mobility. The application shows which places in the city are accessible and allows users to leave comments to improve accessibility. Through a mobile application PWD are able to appeal to the state bodies. This function of the application was demonstrated at the training.