How do you measure whether your programme is inclusive for people with disabilities? Whether they have equal access and reap the same benefits from participation? Last week, DCDD launched its newest Quick Guide Towards Disability Inclusive Programme Monitoring, providing tools for disability inclusion in programme monitoring.
Introducing the Quick Guide
The guide was created especially for mainstream NGOs with little or no disability experience, to help ensure disability inclusive programme monitoring. The guide offers practical tips and tools at four different stages of the programme cycle. It addresses the policy setting, formulation, implementation and evaluation stage. Lieke Scheewe, DCDD coordinator, introduced the quick guide: We developed this guide for the simple reason that as long as people with disabilities aren’t counted, they remain unseen along with their needs.”
“We developed this guide for the simple reason that as long as people with disabilities aren’t counted, they remain unseen along with their needs.”
Lieke Scheewe
Visibility and inclusion go hand in hand. Lieke also noted why DCDD decided to offer this as an online resource: “We have made it an online tool because having it online means that we can make it more accessible to people with visual impairments, but also because we can continue to update it with new tools.”
Data Disaggregation
Kicking off the panel discussion, led by Paulien Bruijn from Into Inclusion, Daniel Mont, CEO and Co-founder of the Center for Inclusive Policy and expert on monitoring and evaluation of disability inclusive development, spoke about disaggregated data and the role it plays in enabling inclusive programme monitoring.
Explaining the purpose of data disaggregation, Daniel said that “if we’re going to address problems of exclusion, we have to be able to find evidence of that exclusion and compare outcomes with people with disabilities versus without. It’s very important, because what is not measured is not seen.”
“if we’re going to address problems of exclusion, we have to be able to find evidence of that exclusion and compare outcomes with people with disabilities versus without. It’s very important, because what is not measured is not seen.”
Daniel mont
In order to collect disaggregated data, The Washington Group questions (WGQs) are widely used to identify people with disabilities. Daniel explains that it is not just as simple as asking a person directly if they have a disability; because of the stigma and shame that surrounds disability, people will not label themselves as such. Therefore, the WGQs ask about functionality (e.g. difficulty seeing / hearing) – and these questions have been thoroughly tested in various contexts.
The WGQs can be used in regular programme monitoring, such as baseline surveys, to help design the programme in an inclusive way. A link to this tool can be found in the quick guide.
Ensuring nobody is left behind
Praveen Kumar Gurunath is Lead Social Inclusion Advisor at VSO International, an organisation which has years of experience with disability inclusive monitoring. Praveen explains how disability is a key area of focus for their outreach activities: “We endeavor to reach out to all communities, particularly those who are marginalised and excluded… we have a policy as part of our disability position paper and a commitment to reach out to 5% of primary actors or beneficiaries who are people with disabilities… We engage with them right from the design stage as co-creators, right through the implementation and monitoring stages.”
In order to collect the disaggregated data needed, VSO is using the Washington Group Questions, mentioned previously by Daniel. In addition, they use a mapping of needs, a dashboard and an internal disability inclusion assessment tool (which looks at human resources, accessibility of meetings, etc). Outreach and social inclusion are important to VSO, and the disability data they collect helps them to ensure accessibility. For example, they can gauge where sign language interpretation or increased physical access are needed.
Getting Started
Fiseha Endale, Program Manager at TLM Ethiopia and member of the monitoring working group of the We Are Able! Consortium, spoke as an example of a programme that has recently started collecting inclusive data using the Washington Group Questions and other tools.
Fiseha highlighted the importance of involving the expertise of people with disabilities and their organisations (OPDs) throughout the monitoring and evaluation cycle, and shared how We Are Able! is doing so. In addition, Fiseha gave advice to other organisations that are starting to collect similar data and communicated the importance of starting this from the design phase of the program.
Daniel concluded the Q&A by saying that data disaggregation is an important first step towards inclusive monitoring, but that other tools are needed to gather more information on the barriers that people with disabilities experience and the solutions they propose. Therefore, the Quick Guide also includes other tools, such as sector-specific surveys (e.g. on employment, education, humanitarian aid, etc).
Partos and DCDD are thankful for the contributions of all the organisations and participants involved in this event. We hope that the quick guide will help guide disability inclusive program monitoring. If you wish to receive more information on the topic and how you can make your programmes inclusive, please contact DCDD at dcdd@dcdd.nl.
Click here to download the PowerPoint slides of the webinar.
The quick guide was launched on October 27th, 2022, during a webinar organised by Partos SP Lab and DCDD as part of the ‘Power of Disability Inclusion exchange sessions’ under the We Are Able! programme, funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
