Walking with Another Man’s Crutches

After what seemed like quite the academic marathon, I had finally turned in all my papers and projects and could look forward to my summer adventure in Bolivia.  I would be working for a small non-profit focused on rural development, though my specific role would be to design a women’s leadership and entrepreneurship program.  I could put my coursework from my first year into practice and see what my concentration in “women’s empowerment and workforce development” actually looked like in the field. 

I had been advised that one of the best qualities for a development practitioner to possess is flexibility.  Often projects don’t go as planned, and one has to be resourceful, creative, and patient in dealing with all the bumps along the way.  In my case though, I didn’t even get to Bolivia before I hit my bump in the road.  Two weeks before departure I was playing softball and got tackled at first base, and next thing I knew I had lined myself up for a hospital stay, surgery, and 8 weeks on crutches. The play had been made, and my trip to Bolivia was called out at the bag.

After a month of recovery, I started back at the internship I had held at Plan International USA throughout the previous school year.  Plan’s focus on community-centered development had first grabbed my attention, and I love the Because I’m a Girl campaign that focuses on gender equity.  This summer, I now have the opportunity to work full-time and to attend many of the international development conferences taking place in DC, including those sponsored by the Society for International Development and InterAction.  I have always really enjoyed working for Plan, and now I’m getting more time to work on actually supporting projects in the field.  I am helping to backstop a project we have in Ghana, in addition to writing proposals for several upcoming opportunities.

I have especially loved my work on the Youth, Education, and Workforce Development taskforce.  As my concentration for IDS focuses largely on women’s economic empowerment, I have really enjoyed learning about the transition from school to the workforce for young adults, especially girls.  My participation on the taskforce has enabled me to attend various talks and events on related topics in the area, which I somehow manage to attend by hobbling through DC’s horrible humidity.  I’ll serve as the point person for Plan’s booth at Making Cents' 5th Annual Global Youth Economic Opportunities Conference from September 7-9^th, so my preparations on that have already begun.  And my attendance at another event this week has lead to further responsibilities at work, and also really hit home regarding all I’ve been through this summer.

Last week I attended a USAID-sponsored event at the QED Group called Inclusive Education--A Discussion with Dr. Margaret McLaughlin and Lynn Losert about Best Practices and Continuing Challenges in Europe And Eurasia, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia.  The goal of the talk was “to bring the various stakeholders who work on education and disability together to learn more about inclusive education, including best practices, and the contextual factors that affect program implementation.”  During the talk, I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb because I am on crutches and for the time being, I am disabled.  It certainly did give me an interesting frame of wind, though- I’ve experienced how incredibly difficult it is to get around in DC, and I can only imagine how much more strenuous such a task would be without paved roads, elevators, and public transportation.

Dr. Losert delivered one of the most poignant points during the talk when she explained how a disability is only a disability in a certain context.  If schools, teachers, and communities were equipped with the knowledge, attitude, and resources to care for these children and to help them to excel to their greatest abilities, their “disability” would instead be only a “difference.”  Yet many realities, such as poverty and lack of awareness on the issue, remain in place that contribute to many people viewing these children as broken, less-than, or hopeless.

In my development understanding until this point, I had associated the term “inclusive education” with the full inclusion of girls into a country or community’s education system.  This meant that girls would have the same access to education as boys, considering such factors as school costs, personal safety, familial expectations, and they would also have the same ability as boys to excel once in the classroom.  Never I had I really thought about all the multifaceted barriers facing children with a disability- whether intellectual, physical, or emotional- that often prevent them from having equal access to education.  Or even if they have access into the facilities, are teachers trained to effectively meet their needs and are mechanisms in place to adequately measure their development?  These children have a right to benefit from a quality education that enables them to learn and grow, and to eventually contribute to society.

Much of what I heard in the talk mirrored the language surrounding gender and education. As a movement is well underway in making schools around the world more “girl-friendly,” a movement is also gaining speed on raising awareness of the rights of children with disabilities, both in and out of the classroom.  Now the next step is to figure out how we as development practitioners can be sure to effectively incorporate disability into current and future programs.

I am looking forward to jumping on this bandwagon and exploring more direct ways to incorporate a focus on disability into programming.  Plan is currently undergoing an organization-wide assessment of our efforts on this front, and I will be assisting with the monitoring from the DC office.  It’s definitely a big step in the right direction.

So maybe this message of inclusive education for children with disabilities would not have had the same impact on me had my current circumstances been different.  But as I see it, I only lost out on a trip to South America, whereas kids all over the world lose out on a lot more on account of their disability- an education and a better future. 

By Katie Appel 

*Disclaimer: This post reflects my own opinions, and not necessarily those of Plan International or Plan International USA.