First impressions of my placement
on Roundabouts in Delhi (India), 23/Dec/2010 07:13, 34 days ago
The organisation I will be working for over the next two years is an NGO providing advice and support to blind and visually impaired individuals, via its radio show and helpline, mainly in the Delhi area but also in Orissa and parts of the North East of India. The organisation employs about 13 people (including me) and about half of the individuals that work there are visually impaired. This means that as well as the office being set up in a very inclusive way for the visually impaired with all the latest screen reading and audio software (although I have yet to broach the issue of it being at basement level down a series of steep steps which prevents anyone from a wheelchair being able to access the building), it also sensitises the staff that are not visually impaired to the needs and equal capabilities of those that are. Perhaps this isn't something I should be surprised by, but having worked for organisations in the UK that were not inclusive in this way, at least not without some serious nudging, it has been good to see it in practice here.The broad aim of my placement is to help the organisation to put an advocacy framework in place. One of the biggest differences for me is that unlike some other organisations I've worked for, where I've had to first convince higher management that campaigning and advocacy is something the organisation should be doing before we could even think about going ahead and actually doing it, in this organisations' case they are already a campaigning organisation, just perhaps not in as public a way as they would like to be. Not only do they already provide direct advocacy services through their helpline and radio show but the office itself is an environment where debate is actively encouraged. In this case, rather than having to convince the organisation to take on any form of advocacy or campaigning at all, if anything it's going to be the complete reverse and a case of getting them to be selective about which issues they want take on first.