Local Partner: National Indigenous Disabled Women Association Nepal (NIDWAN)
Background and objective:
Indigenous Peoples and Peoples with disabilities are heavily influenced by COVID. Indigenous peoples with disabilities comprise of 1300000 and 700000 indigenous women with disabilities in Nepal facing multiple layers of discriminations and exclusion, which has further aggravated during COVID 19. They are having serious health problems (health and WASH), identified as COVID infected patients, stereotypes and stigma against COVID, having hand to mouth problem, facing medical treatment, no data and information about their health, the quarantine services are not accessible an disabled friendly, lack of peer counseling and support and many others. The project ” COVID 19 Inclusive Intervention” will conduct following activities ; Selecting 1 municipality as a sample at local level and doing inventory of COVID-19 with disaggregated information ; Raise Awareness on COVID-19 – Audio-visual vadeo ; provide Disabled and Indigenous Peoples friendly hotline service for information collection and referral mechanism and
Disabled friendly COVID Hand Wash in selected public places or hospital (in partnerships with local government) ; provide medical, basic relief support and counseling support for persons with disabilities and infected person, conduct online discussion on COVID-19 ,conduct research, documentation & publication on COVID-19 ,support indigenous women and persons with disabilities for Income generation, design, develop, produce and uses of disability inclusive COVID-19 pandemic posters, slogans and pamphlets through social media and website and publish at least 3 daily newspaper articles on disability inclusive COVID-19 response, gaps and challenges.
One animation video on “About the Situation of indigenous Women with Disabilities” and one on “Covid Awareness for Persons with Disabilities and Indigenous Persons with Disabilities. A toll-free helpline service for peer counselling support and to inform about covid situation. Poster and fliers on safety measures of covid disseminated using online platforms, social media. NIDWAN Virtual Discussion Series is a continued process which integrates emerging issues and experts from different fields are invited to share their expertise and to sensitize the issues of indigenous women with disabilities. In the program simultaneous Sign Language Interpretation are used to include deaf peoples and be inclusive.A jingle was produced. 600 dignity kits and 300 Covid relief was provided to indigenous women, girls and women with disabilities. 15 small scale seed grant and 6 targeted focused training for livelihood was provided to different Indigenous Women with Disabilities who lost their livelihood during covid.
Local partner information:
NIDWAN exists is to unite young women, indigenous women, women with disabilities and young indigenous women with disabilities to establish fair, just and equitable society and its mission is to assist to maintain dignified living standards of young women, indigenous women, women with disabilities to protect and promote social, economic, political and cultural and environmental justice to create justifiable society. The main programs and priorities are capacity building, grooming leadership, intervention on inclusive education, environmental justice, policy documents, advocacy and lobby on international instrument, strengthening network at grassroots level and making collective voices for strengthening networks.
