Academic Research: Youth Disability Advocacy and Research (YDAR)

>> Holly Key (Project intern)

Dan Jackson, the Principal Investigator for Youth Disability Advocacy and Research (YDAR), spoke to us about his project’s partnership with Action on Disability and Development’s (ADD) Young Leaders programme. 

The programme works to enable young disabled people to become the future leaders of disability advocacy, as it is crucial that they have the opportunity to advocate for themselves and for others. As Dan states, “advocacy movements should be run by disabled people on the whole.”

Dan told us that his project built on ADD’s Young Leaders Programme, who work in Bangladesh, Cambodia, South Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania. A networking grant funded “events and capacity building,” and this encouraged the team to work with ADD and build some of their work off the Young Leaders Programme. 

Dan’s team worked with some of ADD’s leaders in Tanzania and Uganda and helped some of them to take placements with ADD. The project made several micro grants available, which these young leaders could bid for to help make their ideas a reality, encouraging them to take initiative and advocate in their local areas. The programme has also helped young disabled people who are not necessarily young leaders by ADD’s definition, but who have been taught ways to become leaders in their communities and advocacy spheres. 

The programme does not focus on any specific disabilities, but Dan notes that everybody who they worked with had a physical disability and said that “We did not get any applications from learning disabled people [...] so these were all physically disabled people.” He highlights that in East Africa, where his team worked, there were many people with albinism and he noticed instances of stigma and discrimination surrounding them, particularly due to belief systems about alternative beliefs and explanations for the condition. These included beliefs in witchcraft and voodoo, and that the condition is a punishment for wrongdoings. Dan explains: “There’s a sense that people might have done something wrong in a previous life to deserve this.” The team also spoke to a man who was abandoned as a baby because he had a physical disability. He was found alone in a field by a farmer who took him in and raised him. 

The Youth Disability Advocacy and Research project team have put together some fantastic events to help with the advocacy of disabilities, including various workshops, a festival in East Africa about advocacy and change, and a series of webinars which often include guest speakers to discuss different disabilities. 

Please read more about their work here: https://www.youth-disability.org/