Voice and Ownership: Partnering with Organizations of Persons with Disabilities in Education Programming

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

The development sector’s movement towards decolonizing aid is an important step towards just and equitable development, specifically in education. Currently, there is extensive work to decolonize research and programming, increase localization, and increase co-creation. Most of this work focuses on localizing aid, a concept Samantha Power of USAID has championed during her tenure as USAID Administrator. Localizing aid often focuses on increasing the ownership of local partners in development work. However, lacking from this conversation is how to successfully partner with Organizations for Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) within funder-driven project implementation. OPDs are key players to ensuring inclusive development within education; however, Implementing Partners (IPs) have struggled to meaningfully engage OPDs.

Persons with disabilities have historically been marginalized as both actors and beneficiaries within development programming. From 2014 - 2018 less than 2% of international development aid projects targeted persons with disabilities, with less than 0.5% of all international aid funds supporting disability inclusion (Walton, 2018). While the development sector has made strides in recent years to improve disability inclusion, stakeholders must continue to protest the injustice of the current development system to create equitable opportunities and honor the disability rights principle, ‘Nothing about us, without us.’ Local and global OPDs are working to disrupt the current system of development and advocating for inclusion of all aspects of program development. However, in the education sector, OPDs are still asked to work for little or no pay, face operational challenges due to onerous donor and IP requirements, and have limited roles within design, implementation and monitoring of activities. Authentic co-creation and ownership between development stakeholders and OPDs in development is rare, and it is vital that development stakeholders strive for this type of relationship to disrupt the status quo. Cultivating OPD ownership of project interventions and activities is the next hurdle to actualizing localization, and will support sustainability efforts.

This panel will look at ways that development stakeholders can better partner with OPDs and create meaningful partnerships. From practical logistics of partnering with OPDs to OPD-OPD collaboration to genuine co-creation, this panel is for anyone in the education development space who wants their work to be truly inclusive of all.

Sub Unit

• Inclusive Education SIG

Organizer

• Annie Conaghan, University of Notre Dame-Pulte Institute of Global Development

Chair

• Annie Conaghan, University of Notre Dame-Pulte Institute of Global Development

Individual Presentations

• Disability Inclusive Development: Moving beyond data collectors and trainers for OPDs. - Ashley Rae Stone, Inclusive Development Partners

• The importance of OPD collaboration across organizations - Eileen Dombrowski, School-to-School International (STS)

• Creating genuine co-creation: DELITES Case study of co-creation with OPDs - Annie Conaghan, University of Notre Dame-Pulte Institute of Global Development

Discussants

• Sekerani Edgars Kufakwina, Malawi National Association of Deaf

• Padam Bahadur Pariyar, Inclusive Development Partners