Our challenge  

Persons with disabilities on average as a group are more likely to experience adverse socioeconomic outcomes than persons without disabilities, such as less education, worse health outcomes, less employment, and higher poverty rates.

  • Poverty may increase the risk of disability through malnutrition, inadequate access to education and health care, unsafe working conditions, polluted environment, and lack of access to safe water and sanitation.
  • Disability may increase the risk of poverty, through lack of employment and education opportunities, lower wages, and increased cost of living with a disability. 

Our ambition 

Inclusive education, inclusive health services, access to decent work and employment are the key elements of SeeYou disability inclusive development. The integration of disability issues in development is critical for the elimination of poverty, the achievement of social inclusion and equitable, fair and sustainable development. It is impossible to genuinely achieve international agreed development goals without the integration of the rights, well-being and perspectives of persons with disabilities. Inclusive development is empowerment, through which persons with disabilities move from being considered “vulnerable groups” to becoming resource groups in society and contributors to development. SeeYou and partners are working to ensure that development at all levels become more inclusive. Our ambition is that persons with disabilities, at all stages of life, have access to public goods and services, realize their rights and participate in all aspects of society and development on an equal basis with others. 

Through this thematic area SeeYou set for itself three results areas. 

  1. Inclusive education – that children with disabilities are included in general education, as well as in early childhood quality learning, and that accessibility of educational infrastructure and provision of reasonable accommodation is ensured.  
  2. Inclusive health services – that persons with disabilities have access to health services, health facilities and equipment, appropriately trained health care providers and accessible information and comprehensive early assessments is provided, and identification and referral systems are in place.  
  3. Access to decent work and employment – that youth with disabilities have access to vocational training, skills development and other employment-support programmes funded by governments and other stakeholders. Decent work opportunities in the rural and informal economies, where persons with disabilities frequently seek their livelihoods, is improved.  

Our approach  

  • Disability mainstreaming  

The concept of mainstreaming disability in development is broadly defined as the inclusion of persons with disabilities in all aspects of development efforts. Mainstreaming is a method of ensuring that persons with disabilities can participate on an equal basis in all services or activities intended for the general population, including education, health, employment and social services. Mainstreaming requires a paradigm shift – or a new way of thinking – in approaches to disability and to all development planning. There are many benefits to adopting this approach, as mainstreaming is recognized as the most cost-effective and efficient way of achieving equality for persons with disabilities. Indeed, persons with disabilities can be included in mainstream programmes with minimal adaptation. 

  • Providing Disability-Specific initiatives 

To achieve the full inclusion and participation of persons with disabilities in development, it is often necessary to provide targeted support to ensure the inclusion of persons with disabilities on an equal basis with others. For this reason SeeYou and its partners are implementing projects dedicated to addressing the rights and inclusion of persons with disabilities, in education, training, employment and health sectors. Supporting specific initiatives to ensure disability-inclusive development and the equal enjoyment of human rights by all persons with disabilities.   

  • Disaster preparedness and response 

We strengthen resilience and disaster preparedness, and we support disability- inclusive disaster response. We explore strategic partnerships with mainstream emergency actors. In our partner countries and beyond, we engage in case of an emergency depending on the magnitude of the emergency, our experience and network within the countries, and requests by mainstream organisations to provide expertise.