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ADVOCACY

Advocacy is when you actively support an issue or cause in order to bring about change. The aim is to influence the political, social or economic environment that affect a particular community or group of people.

What is advocacy?

Advocacy is when you actively support an issue or cause in order to bring about change.

Often the aim is to influence the political, social or economic environment that affect a particular community or group of people. It can also seek to change the attitude and behaviour of certain groups towards a particular issue.

Advocacy is also a means for individuals affected by a particular issue to make sure that their voice is heard and give them the opportunity to influence the policies and practices that affect them.

 

Background

Over the years there have been an increasing number of calls to the Eyeway Helpdesk from individuals who have experienced some form of discrimination as a result of their impairment. Score Foundation recognised that it wasn’t enough to just deal with these calls on an individual basis and that there was a need to actively and publicly campaign for long term, sustainable changes to policy or practice for the visually impaired community in India.
 

Our advocacy activities

  • Campaigns– bringing issues affecting individuals with visual impairment to the attention of decision makers, service providers, the media and wider public.

  • Advocacy training–providing training to individuals with visual impairment and/or those representing them (i.e. parents) on how to become stronger self-advocates of their rights and entitlements.

  • Sensitisation–working with service providers (i.e. ophthalmologists, educators) to sensitise them on the needs and opportunities available to individuals with visual impairment.

  • Research–undertaking quantitative and qualitative, field based, research on issues affecting individuals with visual impairment.

There has long been a need for standardized, universal guidelines for use of writers/scribes/lab assistants for examinations. Score Foundation (Eyeway) and XRCVC in collaboration have put together the first draft for sharing with the community. This is a collective effort to partner with all concerned stakeholders to prepare a joint representation of common uniform guidelines that can be submitted to the government to be issued which can then become the base for all examination authorities and examinations. Please go through both the documents given below:

Click here to read the draft
Click here to read a letter outlining the type of feedback we are looking for, and the procedure to provide the feedback.


Current Projects:

  1. Delhi Students Advocacy workshops: We will be working with groups of students from Delhi University supporting them to become agents strong self-advocates and campaign for equal rights and access to services for blind and visually impaired individuals in India.

  2. Disability Certificates: We aim to ensure that all disabled people that meet the eligibility criteria for the disability certificate are aware their right to access these entitlements and also how to go about obtaining them. We also want to ensure that the authorities responsible for issuing the certificates carry out the assessments efficiently and to a high standard.

  3. Inclusive education: We will be facilitating a series of advocacy workshops working with parents, children and educators will bring to light examples of good and bad practice in inclusive education. The aim is to support parents and children to become stronger self-advocates of their right to an equal education. The findings from the workshops will also act as a wider catalyst to bring about changes in the policy & practices in inclusive education.

  4. Air travel: A large number of disabled people use air travel as their way of travelling from A to B across India yet frequently they face barriers that prevent them from being able to travel independently and with confidence.

  5. Examination provisions: Recently it has been brought to our attention by candidates who are undertaking the Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET) on 26 June 2011 that no information is available regarding provisions for visually impaired candidates in the advertisement, application form or CTET website. We have taken up the matter with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and you can read more about it  here.

Support us in our work: We need your constant support & motivation to keep moving in our advocacy projects.

CBSE/CTET Campaign
 

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