On October 11, the DCDD Network came together to reflect on DCDD’s multi-annual strategy for 2024-2026. Siebrand Wierda, DCDD board co-chair, presented the values, history, and current context that underpin the three goals that DCDD has for the coming years:
- Growing collaboration on disability inclusion
- DCDD serves the development and humanitarian sector as a Disability Inclusion Expertise Hub
- The Ministry of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation applies disability inclusion
The meeting brought together our participants to begin laying the foundations to make these goals a reality.
A little bit of context
Over the past two years, DCDD has led over 9 Power of Disability Inclusion sessions as part of the We Are Able! program (funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs). Our cause – mainstreaming disability inclusion in development programmes – brings together individuals and organisations from across the globe. People with disabilities in complex contexts such as war or natural disasters are often the last to receive support or are stigmatised by society. Many of our participants have a personal and professional connection to our cause.
One participant shared how he was part of a church community in Nepal where many of the members had a disability. When an earthquake hit the community, he observed that people with a disability were the last to receive support. Another participant shared how, growing up, people with a disability were seen as cursed and were ostracised. Another participant shared how, after becoming a wheelchair user in his early 20s, he realised that the challenges he faced were not really physical as much as they were caused by society.
“I realised that when you’re not in the policymakers’ heads, you’re not included. When they don’t speak with you but just about you, they speak against you.”
Each of our participants’ stories reaffirms the importance of our cause. People with a disability need to be included.
Meeting a growing need
As an organisation, we see a growing need for practical input on how to become disability-inclusive.
“It’s a trend within the development sector in the last couple of years to start engaging more and more in the area of inclusion and from an intersectionality perspective. We’ve [also] seen that reflected in the grant framework of the ministry for civil society organisations,” shared Lieke Scheewe, DCDD coordinator.
The Power of Voices (PoV) is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ (MoFA) current grant instrument that focuses on strengthening civil society organisations and their contribution to an inclusive and sustainable society.
“In our initial discussions about these objectives the idea was that we really need to connect our Dutch reality to what is happening on the ground,” said DCDD board member Dicky Nieuwenhuis.
As grant structures, like PoV, continue to reflect the new emphasis on inclusion, there will be a growing need and demand for disability inclusion expertise both on an international and local level. DCDD’s second goal, serving the sector as a Disability Inclusion Expertise Hub, aims to meet the growing need for expertise.
An Expertise Hub for Disability Inclusion
One of the critical questions for the session and DCDD’s future strategy was how to organise the expertise in our network to become more inclusive, more readily available and visible in the development sector whilst enhancing disability inclusion and inspiring other stakeholders.
“As DCDD, we try to be a network where all of this expertise is available for the development sector to draw from, to find tools or resources, connections with other people and organisations, and that is how we try to promote this vision of disability inclusion”, says Lieke.
An example elsewhere
DCDD is not the only organisation to want to create an expertise hub for disability inclusion. An inspiring example brought up in the session is DID4all, the helpdesk on disability inclusion that the Australian government set up with the support of CBM. The helpdesk includes a website, tools and methods that every NGO from the Australian sector can access and ask for training, consultancy or support. The Australian government financially supports this helpdesk and provides proof of concept for what DCDD aims to do here in the Netherlands.
This strategy meeting started the journey to realising the expertise hub. However, we cannot make the expertise hub a reality without input from our network participants or persons with a disability: “Nothing about us, without us!” as one participant of the network meeting said.
Conclusie
The meeting concluded on a high note with a final reflection on the Disability Inclusive Expertise Hub as a concept.
“It’s an ambitious goal… It will require a lot of work, but it is do-able!”
Keep an eye on our website in the coming months for more updates on what is happening within DCDD. The completed strategy document will be available by the end of the year, and we already have several brainstorming sessions planned to take the Expertise Hub from concept to reality.
