Krystle Lai, Youth for Development volunteer, Sierra Leone

Krystle Lai is just coming to the end of her time as a VSO Youth for Development volunteer in Sierra Leone. She has spent 14 months working as an advocacy adviser for Youth Alliance for Peace and Development, where she has been helping member organisations develop their advocacy campaigns. Here Ali Martin Sesay tells us about how Krystle has helped his organisation raise awareness across Sierra Leone of the issues affecting blind people.

Background
It is estimated that 5% of Sierra Leone’s population is blind. Daily, over 300,000 individuals are facing discrimination at home and in the community, poor education, unemployment, little access to public amenities and danger in negotiating their way around towns and communities.

One of the biggest challenges they face is the attitude of others: disabled people are frequently defined by their disability, with no regard given to the contribution they can make to society, or to their personal and professional needs.

Vision for the Blind
An organisation that is working to change these attitudes and tackle the challenges is Vision for the Blind. Established in 2003, Vision for the Blind undertakes awareness raising, lobbying, rehabilitation, and skills training activities. One of the founding members, all of whom are blind themselves, is Ali Martin Sesay, a passionate and persuasive 26-year old who now heads up the Makeni office of the organisation.

Ali Martin recognises that he was privileged in being able to acquire an education right up to tertiary level, but school life was not without challenges: “When I was in secondary school a teacher walked out of the class saying if a blind person is in this class he will not be able to teach because he will find it difficult. Later his colleagues explained to him we can still communicate with him”

Hard to get employment
Yet despite excelling at school and college, he found it difficult to gain employment on graduation. It was this experience that provided the impetus for he and friends to establish Vision for the Blind: “Very few blind people go through education, so if those of us who are educated face marginalisation, then you wonder what will be the situation of that blind person who is not educated, who may not have acquired skill that will make him self -reliant.”

Giving blind people skills from which they can earn an income and therefore live independently is a fundamental part of the organisation’s activity. Vision for the Blind’s offices in Makeni are a hive of activity and alive with conversation. Across two rooms some 50 individuals are learning tie-dye and soap making techniques: after a few weeks they will complete their training and leave, taking with them a business starter kit that will help them establish their own enterprise. They are being taught by blind people who themselves were once beneficiaries of the organisation.

Advocacy
While skill training is essential in building the capabilities of individuals, for wider impact that changes attitudes and policy, community development and advocacy is crucial.

“Most of the problems we are faced with is as a result of marginalisation, due to either ignorance or wilful acts by society,” says Ali Martin, “So this organisation advocates on behalf of blind people and educates society about how blind people could be useful and how much they could contribute immensely to the development of the nation.”

The support of Krystle
It is in this area of its work that Vision for the Blind has been receiving the support of VSO Youth for Development volunteer, Krystle Lai. She is a working as an advocacy adviser for an umbrella organisation called YAPAD (Youth Alliance for Peace and Development), which is a membership organisation of some 45 small NGOs working around the country, particularly in the areas of peace and reconciliation, HIV & AIDS, enterprise development, disability and women’s rights.

Krystle has developed an advocacy training manual and a series of training workshops that have enabled members to achieve a significant change in the reach and impact of their advocacy activities. Ali Martin explains:

Impact
“Previously in our advocacy programmes, we’d organise outreach work, visit villages, talk to the officials, people and radio stations ourselves but Krystle made us realise we cannot talk for the people all the time: the beneficiaries feel these problems most, just as it is commonly said ‘who feels it, knows it.”

“Krystle taught us that we do not have to talk for the people all the time. Sometimes, let us just prepare the ground and enable the people to do the talking for themselves. With her support we trained about 60 disabled youths to work as advocates. So now the beneficiaries are working together with us. We are no more working for them, we are working together.”

Through community workshops and media activity these advocates are reaching thousands of people throughout Sierra Leone, and in doing so are working towards a change in attitudes towards those with disabilities.

The change in impact and reach of Vision for the Blind’s advocacy work has come at a crucial time for Sierra Leone: in March 2007 the government signed the UN Convention of the Rights of the Disabled, meaning it is committed to improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals. For real change to happen it will be essential that disabled people’s voices are heard on the issues that matter to them.

Looking to the future Ali Martin is hoping for a time when the contribution that disabled people can make to is fully recognised and enabled: “People think they have to talk for us and we tell them that no, just, talk to us and we will talk to you. Think with us but don’t think for us.”