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February 20, 2006
AAR Cambodia -Aiko Baba (JSRPD)
My name is Aiko Baba (Ms.), new staff at JSRPD.
It is my great pleasure to take part in this dialogue
with formar participants and I’d like to contribute
as much as possible.
Recently I had an opportunity to visit the Association
for Aid and Relief, Japan (AAR JAPAN) in Phnom Penh,
Camabodia with Ms. Okuhira and today I would like to share
my experience with you.
AAR JAPAN in Cambodia, with the vision to promote
the equal opportunitie and social participation of people with
disabilities in Cambodia, established the Vocational Training
Centre in 1993 and has been supporting people with disabilities since.
This centre carries out sewing course, TV/radio reparing course
and wheelchair production workshop.
The majority of the participants in the wheelchair workshop
are landmine survivors. The apprenticeship programme sends
out trained students to rural areas where they teach people
with disabilities in rural areas so that they can start local
small business．
AAR JAPAN in Cambodia also provides participants with
literacy classes as well as classes on social knowledge
such as human rights, sanitation, nutrition etc.
On our visit, we met a young man with physical disability
on his legs caused by polio. He had dropped out from
high school due to the lack of accessibility, and he resumed
his study at AAR JAPAN in Phunom Penh and now works
as a vocational training teacher there.
The participants of these programmes are people with light
or mild disabilities and persons with severe disabilities
are not included yet. Althought the number of beneficiaries
is limited, like the young man we met, it is certainly benefiting
people with disability in Cambodia to live more independently.
Althought what each of us can do is small, I believe
that accummulation of all of these small efforts in a long run
result in a big delicious fruit.
Warm regards,
Aiko Baba
Posted by jicafriends at February 20, 2006 04:18 PM