Public private partnership: A strategy for achieving sustainable Inclusive disability development.

#SDGAction42854

Description

Intro

Informed by WHO’s estimate, 15% of a national population of 24 million Cameroonians live with one form of disability, Cameroon signed the UNCRPD in 2006 and in 2010 enacted a national disability law. Despite these efforts, access to services by persons with disabilities remains largely disproportionate resulting to exclusion – thereby leading to worsening socioeconomic experiences. Mactaggart et al (2014) report a regional disability prevalence of 10.5% for the Northwest region. Leveraging the opportunity created by the decentralization law of 2010, from 2015 to 2018, Cameroon Baptist Convention (CBC) Health Services supported 20 local councils to implement inclusive local governance.

Objective of the practice

The main objective of this practice is to promote inclusive local governance as a model of governance at local level, with a focus on the Northwest region of Cameroon. This practice is premised on the assumption that disability is shaped by locally created stereotypes and misconceptions and consequently should be dismantled by locally derived solutions and therefore identifies local government units as drivers for sustainable change. It takes advantage of the resources devolved to councils in the areas of livelihood, education, health, social participation, women empowerment and infrastructural development to build their competences to take on development in an inclusive manner. Firstly, using the twin track approach, this practice puts a strong emphasis on addressing issues that affect the lives of all disenfranchised groups including persons with disabilities with a view to give them a voice through empowering and accompanying them in efforts to promote their rights and enhance their participation. Secondly, this practice targets key drivers of change and structures that facilitate inequalities through capacity building to change paradigms and advocacy to dismantle structural enablers of discrimination and inequality. 
This practice equips local government units with the tools for participatory development and inclusive planning. It ensures that local government units practically include all sections of their population in defining and undertaking development as a strategy to achieve equity and sustainability. Sustainability in the context of this practice is anchored on the formulation and approval of municipal ordinances that foster inclusive development and on the ability of disenfranchised groups to exploit their potentials in inclusive settings. This practice contributes to SDG 1 through promoting pro-poor, gender sensitive poverty eradication interventions such village savings and loans schemes; contributes to achieving SDG 3 through financing multidisciplinary community outreach campaigns as an approach to taking primary health care to remote and underserved communities; advances SDG 4 through implementing “back to school” campaigns (consist of taking full responsibility for the education of disenfranchise children and progressively empowering their families to take responsibility) aimed at ensuring that every child of school age in communities is enrolled and participates in education meaningfully; contributes to SDG 5 through combating gender based violence; and supports SDG 11 through enabling local government units to develop and enforce policies on universal designs. Finally, done within the framework of a pilot, this practice recognizes its capacity for improvement by embedding in its design/implementation a strong component on community of practice with the aim of promoting experiential learning and knowledge development.

Partners

This practice was implemented by the Cameroon Baptist Convention (CBC) Health Services with funding from AUSAID through CBM Australia engaging a broad range of stakeholders from the public, private and civil society sectors. This included but was not limited to: The Local Government Training Center (CEFAM), Special Council Support Fund for Mutual Assistance (FAICOM), National Participatory Development Program (PNDP) and the United Councils and Cities of Cameroon (UCCC). City Councils, Municipal Councils, District Health Services, DPOs and others were beneficiaries. Overall, stakeholders heralded as an added value of the practice, the shift in focus from infrastructural to people centered development.

Implementation of the Project/Activity

The planning of this activity started with the carrying out of a contextual analysis of the situation of disabilities in the Northwest Region in 2014, identifying the opportunities for and barriers to community based inclusive development and identifying ways to mitigate the challenges and ensure sustainability. At takeoff, through consultative discussions and implementation meetings with key stakeholders, consensus was reached on the importance to shift development practice from simply development to inclusive development with inclusive local governance as the mechanism for success. In the light of the foregoing, advocacy and lobbying were key interventions and were centered around: the development and insertion of modules on inclusive development in the training of local government administrators; introduction of municipal ordinances that recognize the rights of disenfranchised groups and promote inclusion; respect of the national laws on disability, the CRC and CEDAW; development of mechanisms against GBV and for child protection. This practice also focused on institutional strengthening by equipping local government units with the tools for inclusive development and the promotion of health and education fairs as well as outreach campaigns for an effective strategy for primary health care in deprived and underserved communities. It also introduced a strong component on experiential learning and knowledge development by setting up and supporting communities of practice and lastly promoted visibility to enhance interdependence among local councils involved in then practice. The aforementioned activities were implemented within the framework of MoU which defined obligations and commitments. To ensure council development plans are designed and/or revised to facilitate inclusive development, capacity building combined with advising as provided at various stages of the project cycled management. Activities were supported through periodic facilitative supervision visits using techniques such as peer review and coaching

Results/Outputs/Impacts

Enabling factors and constraints

Several factors led to the success of this practice in the region. Firstly, the existence of a disability program, that is the Socio-Economic Empowerment for Person with Disability (SEEPD) program. with a mandate to improve on the lives of persons with disabilities, contributed greatly to the realisation of this practice as the program structure provides for expertise in the domains of livelihood, health, education and gender. Skills in these components have been relevant in the mainstreaming of disability. The perceived integrity of the implementing organisation as a faith-based structure with several years of practice and experience in promoting community development facilitated consensus building amongst stakeholders. Also, the community-based approach used in the implementation of the practice brought together community-based group, actors, CBR-volunteers and DPOs, a factor which helped greatly in the attainment of the success of the practice, as the unique perspectives of these groups were taken into consideration throughout the project cycle. In the process, the different DPOs were empowered and trained to advocate and raise issues pertaining to their rights as well as proposing solutions for handling the challenges they faced and this ensured that the decisions arrived took into consideration the views of the disenfranchised group. In addition, there commitment of community media structures to vulgarise the actions taken by the councils contributed gave visibility to inclusive development as a new brand. By extension this galvanised a lot of community support for inclusion. Furthermore, the willingness of the state to facilitate inclusion demonstrated in the enactment of the 2010 law on decentralisation, the signing of the UNCRPD, gave this practice legitimacy and increased acceptance amongst public and private sector operators. In addition to all these factors, financing of inclusive development designs by AUSAID through CBM was the main source of financial support for this practice.
Some constraints were recorded in the implementation of this practice like;
- Only few staffs from councils were trained on DID thus weakening internalisation of an inclusive development culture. To mitigate this, councils were supported to put in place capacity building plans to respond to emerging development needs within the context of the SDGs. Also, councils were encouraged to have disability as core elements of partnership engagement with other mainstream actors.
- Consultation mechanism with persons with disabilities to represent their views in municipal decision making were observed to be weak. As a way out, councils were supported to organise DPO structures within each municipality to facilitate political aggregation and articulation.
- Delays in transfers of funds from the central government to councils delayed and obstructed the smoothe implementation of council development plans

Sustainability and replicability

To ensure continuity and extension, this practice introduced the concept and practice of inclusion as an integral element of community development as opposed to an add-on. This required consistent capacity building, advocacy, advising, and supervision to consolidate the mainstreaming of disability inclusive development principles in the policy and practice of local governance.
The use of a community-based approach made use of already existing structures within the community thereby guaranteeing the ownership and continuation of the practice by key community structures and institutions.
The twin track approach to disability used, helped sustain the practice. This approach ensured that persons with disabilities are empowered through specific interventions and also that development actors are provided skills to effectively mainstream disability. This method adopted provided the tools for persons with disabilities to be self-empowered advocates and for communities to be aware of the rewards of inclusion.
The creation and management of a community of practice facilitated the generation and documentation of knowledge gained through the implementation of the practice, thereby simplifying transferability.
Embedding this practice on the tenets of the Cameroon law on decentralisation gave the legal basis for the replication on a national scale.

Conclusions

Prior to 2015, actions carried out for persons with disabilities were seen as charity, which falls under the mandate of the Ministry of Social Affairs. With this mentality, the development needs of persons with disabilities and other disenfranchised groups were excluded from community development plans leading to worsening socio-economic experiences. The practice portrayed the notion inclusion as being central to development. This assessment had not been presented before and as such was a novelty that drew attention and spurred reflections around it. 
With the implementation of this practice, some lessons were learnt including: 
1. The process of decentralisation can offer a significant opportunity for including disability in the development agenda of local councils thereby introducing inclusive development from the base. In our experience, councils have the potentials to define development in their context and once they lead by example, other development stakeholders within their municipalities follow thus resulting to sustainable change. 
2. Accompanying councils after providing capacity building in D&ID can facilitate their understanding of inclusive development which will be demonstrated in quality of decisions and changes put in place to improve the participation of persons with disabilities in mainstream life. 
3. Local government units can build community development plans on the five axes of the Community Based Rehabilitation matrix for optimal results. In our experience, it was observed that council development plans aligned with the axis of the Community Based rehabilitation matrix, produced more sustainable results. 
4. Increased self esteem is a positive outcome that results from the participation in development by disenfranchised groups. It was observed that the introduction of this practice gave rise to social movements for the promotion of disability rights, women’s rights and children’s rights as a demonstration of empowerment by groups that are often excluded from development planning and practice.

Other sources of information

www.cbchealthservices.org

SDGS & Targets

Goal 4

Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

Goal 11

Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Goal 5

Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Goal 1

End poverty in all its forms everywhere

Goal 3

Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Deliverables & Timeline

N/A

Resources mobilized

Resources

Staff / Technical expertise

Staff trained in development management, disability right, peace and conflict resolution, communication, public health, financial management, inclusive project cycle management.

Partnership Progress

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False