Center for Citizens with Disabilities, CCD, Tuesday, trained Persons with Disabilities ,PWDs, on Rights Advocacy and Advocacy Action Plan in Benin, Edo.
The theme of the exercise training is: “Promoting inclusive economic opportunities and community resilience for Persons with Disabilities”.
The exercise is being implemented in collaboration with the Project Enable Africa with support from the U.S. – Alumni Engagement Innovation Fund.
The Acting Director, CCD, Mr Godwin Unumeri said the training was designed to build the capacity of PWDs to be economically resilient to identify advocacy issues.
Unumeri said the exercise would empower the participant to understand the context of advocacy, advocate in a corporate manner and insist on their rights using disabilities’ models to avoid distractions.
“The training will expose participant knowledge that rights based advocacy is for rights of PWDs on the understanding that persons with disabilities are entitled to their rights as contained in the National Disabilities Law”.
On non implementation of the PWDs Law in Edo, Unumeri said the PWDs have not advocated enough to push for its implementation in the state.
“We came here with the mindset that Edo does not have a law that guarantees rights of PWDs in the state.
“We only just got to know from them now that a law has been passed to that effect but has not been implemented.
“What I can say is that the people who advocated for the passage just sat down and watched after its passage.
“The workshop will expose them to the knowledge of advocacy that will help them push issues in disability law that have been passed and help them articulate themselves in going about the advocacy.
“This training will help the various disability clusters to know that they need to work together to achieve their advocacy objectives”, he said.
According to him, PWDs have the material and human resources within themselves that they are not utilising.
Speaking on the topic, Introduction to Advocacy and Advocacy Action Plan, Unumeri urged participants to always prepare an action plan before embarking on advocacy.
He added that preparing advocacy action plan would help PWDs foster accountability and coordination among team members.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that participants were also taken through Understanding Disabilities Rights and Advocacy.
