Empowerment and Intervention

Dhulikhel Rotary Disability Awareness Project

Yesterday we visited one of the ‘Club-to-Club’ partner projects that have launched as a result of the ‘Rotary USA/Nepal Disability Awareness Program’. To see this project in action was very inspiring and it is already having a wonderful impact on many lives. This is a partnership between the Rotary Clubs of Dhulikhel, Seattle-International District and University District.

The Rotary Foundation Matching Grant Project has two main parts: one is vocational training with empowerment and employment opportunities. The other is orthopedic surgeries and physical therapy for thirty individuals.

Rotarian Ashok Shrestha from RC Dhulikhel gave us a tour of the newly launched Disability Support Program, where people with disabilities receive vocational training, jobs and a chance at a productive future. They are running this program in a very simple, effective and efficient way. One small manufacturing center works with bamboo products and another works with rataan. They have identified a number of products which are in high demand, such as student bookcases, coat racks and small stools. They produce these and then sell them to retailers. So far the demand far exceeds their ability to supply, however they are continuing to ‘ramp-up’ production to meet demand. There is a good profit margin on these products which bodes very well for project sustainability.

Even though our project motto is “We Are All Able”, I am still amazed at just how able People With Disabilities (PWD’s) are. The production team that has been trained to produce the student bookcases includes three blind individuals, one with developmental disability and three with physical handicaps. Two of the young men with blindness were using very sharp tools to cut the bamboo into about one-inch strips, a fellow with one leg and another physically handicapped woman were sawing them into the correct length and one physically handicapped person, the man with developmental disability and a guy with blindness were assembling them into bookcase form. One of the men doing final assembly was blind, yet he skillfully and precisely hammered each of the one-inch slats of bamboo to the bookcase frame.

To top it off, the young man in charge of the bookkeeping and accounting is also a person with blindness and he keeps track of all accounts via computer. So many great skills are being taught with this program that will impact the trainee’s life and their family's lives for generations to come.

We also visited an orthopedic hospital where doctors are going to operate on the little boy you see in one of the photos, who had been badly burned in a fire in his village. He was happily coloring away when we introduced ourselves. The severe burns have also caused his leg muscles to contract so that he now isn’t able to straighten them out. His parents had spent all of their savings trying to help their son in the village hospital. The matching grant funding that has been raised for this project are his hope to walk again. 30 such surgeries will be done as a result of this one grant... 15 operations have already been accomplished.

Getting these grants isn’t an easy process. Ashok Shrestha, Susan Sola and Judy Ginn all put in a great deal of effort to help make this project come to life. But when you see the transformational impact with your own eyes, it is like a gift that we both give and receive. We give the help and hope, we receive the satisfaction of being able to be of service to others through Rotary.

-Rob

P.S. Many thanks to Dhulikhel Rotarian Ashok Shrestha, who is a tour-de-force of Rotary projects and help. He lives the Rotary motto and is himself an inspiration to so many.