The activities below can help you support youth and adults with disabilities in accessing secondary and higher education:
Use your mouse or keyboard to expand each of the activity headings below. To add an activity to your action plan, select the Add button beside it. Once you have added an activity to your action plan, select Action plan > My action plan from the menu above to complete that activity.
Involve the community
Often secondary and higher education facilities are located away from the student’s community. This can make involving the community more challenging. However, there are several things that CBR can do to facilitate community involvement:
Encourage the community and school authorities to organize transport facilities
Mobilize the community to raise finances for fees, uniforms, assistive devices and additional support
Encourage the community to recognize students with disabilities as a resource for the community
Gain access to grants and government loans
Facilitate lobbying and formation of advocacy groups together with local disabled people’s organizations to promote the rights of students with disabilities in secondary and higher education
Learn about how a community in Nepal used the funds that they raised.
CBR in Action
In Ukraine, parents are very involved in an inclusive secondary school for 1000 students. Their activities include:
Clubs for parents of students with disabilities, which provide peer support for parents and produce booklets about the need for and benefit of education
A parents’ day every month, which includes a drama programme
Parents’ meetings based in the inclusive classrooms
Team meetings, where parents meet rehabilitation professionals, school administrators and teachers to discuss the students’ progress
Support the family
Some families may be quite resistant to the idea of students with disabilities having access to secondary or higher education. There can be many doubts, difficulties and adjustments that create obstacles to full support for students with disabilities from their families. CBR personnel can educate and support families so that they offer support to students with disabilities, both during their education and in transitional periods.
Learn about how parents in a community Ukraine actively participated in making the secondary school inclusive.
CBR in Action
In Ukraine, parents are very involved in an inclusive secondary school for 1000 students. Their activities include:
Establish a resource class
Buy resource materials, furniture and lodging
Provide food expenses for students with disabilities
Support one teacher with special education training, and support two other aides
The Special Education Council provides funds for five staff in the field. A private funding group and non-governmental organizations sponsor the students with disabilities.
Help to create an inclusive learning environment
While many of the activities in the secondary and higher education element are similar to those in the Primary education element, there are some specific things to consider when supporting secondary and higher education, such as environment and location, curriculum and teaching methods, examination and assessment, information and communications technology and peer support and role-models.
Encourage best use of specialist resources and support
CBR can encourage schools and colleges to use specialist resources to increase the inclusion of students with disabilities.
In addition to encouraging the best use of these resources, it is also important to consider carefully the use of special schools.
Learn about how a school in Nepal helps students with disabilities prepare for inclusion and transition into regular classes.
CBR in Action
Cherry was born with clubfoot deformities into a very poor farmer’s family in the Philippines. With the help of a local philanthropist and CBR she underwent surgery and received customized footwear. When she went to Secondary school, she was teased and excluded from participating in activities with the other students. However, with the help of her family, CBR personnel and her own determination, Cherry continued her studies despite the discrimination.
In high school, she was treated better, and a local non-governmental organization – Simon of Cyrene – supported her higher education costs, including transportation, school supplies and even medical and health services. Following high school, she was given a scholarship to complete a two-year college course on computer applications. Like her peers, Cherry is now working on the open job market.
Cherry says: “Now I am very proud of reaping the fruits of my labour. I am helping my family financially and I can provide for my personal necessities. The people in our community who used to stare and laugh at me have changed their perception of me. Now I can see admiration in their eyes that even with disability I was able to attain the status where I am in now. My self-esteem and confidence have been enhanced, enough to give me strength to face the challenges that may come along.
Help to ease transitions
This is a key issue and often overlooked. Transitional periods during education include:
Primary to secondary
Secondary to tertiary
Tertiary to a sustainable livelihood
Often, students with disabilities are required to move away from their communities to complete higher education. This move can make transitional periods more difficult, and many find it very challenging to adjust without the support of their families and communities.
Research highlights the fact that, because of poor transitions, twice as many students with disabilities fail to pursue college as their peers.
CBR can work with students, families, community members and educational institutions to ensure supportive links are created and maintained throughout transitional periods. The Rwanda case-study cited at the beginning of this element illustrates how collaboration and lobbying helped achieve successful transitions.
Learn about how a young woman with clubfoot overcame the challenges she faced in education with the support of CBR that helped her through her transitions.
CBR in Action
Cherry was born with clubfoot deformities into a very poor farmer’s family in the Philippines. With the help of a local philanthropist and CBR she underwent surgery and received customized footwear. When she went to Secondary school, she was teased and excluded from participating in activities with the other students. However, with the help of her family, CBR personnel and her own determination, Cherry continued her studies despite the discrimination.
In high school, she was treated better, and a local non-governmental organization – Simon of Cyrene – supported her higher education costs, including transportation, school supplies and even medical and health services. Following high school, she was given a scholarship to complete a two-year college course on computer applications. Like her peers, Cherry is now working on the open job market.
Cherry says: “Now I am very proud of reaping the fruits of my labour. I am helping my family financially and I can provide for my personal necessities. The people in our community who used to stare and laugh at me have changed their perception of me. Now I can see admiration in their eyes that even with disability I was able to attain the status where I am in now. My self-esteem and confidence have been enhanced, enough to give me strength to face the challenges that may come along.
Welcome to INCLUDE! This short tour will introduce you to the many resources available to you in our
learning community.
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This is the Module library page. It is the first thing you will see after you register and log into INCLUDE.
From here, you can choose to view nine different learning modules, each of which examines a different aspect of Community-Based Rehabilitation.
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Each time you make a selection from the Module library, you will enter a learning module (in this case the Health module) that you can interact with in a number of ways.
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You will have a number of opportunities to reflect on your thoughts, feelings and experiences related to CBR, as well as on what you have learned so far. If you want, you can choose to share your reflections with other members of the INCLUDE community.
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Note that when you are inside a learning module, you use the Continue and Back buttons at the bottom of the screen to move ahead to the next page, or go back to the previous page.
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You can also choose to jump directly to a different part of the current module by making a selection from the menu on the left side of the screen.
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In each learning module, you will also have the opportunity to respond to poll questions and learn what others in the INCLUDE community are thinking about CBR.
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You can also review numerous real-life examples of how others are successfully implementing CBR around the world.
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And you can create an action plan to help you:
•Better understand the needs of your programme, and
•Take specific, concrete steps to address them
As with reflections, if you want, you can also choose to share your action plan with other members of the community.
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Additional resources are available any time you want to access them, frrom the menu at the top of every screen.
From the Reflect option on this menu, you can:
•Review all of the reflections you have entered so far, or
•View the reflections other members of the INCLUDE community have entered and chosen to share
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Under Action Plan, you can:
•Work on your own action plan, or
•View action plans that other members of the community have created and chosen to share
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You can also view the full library of real-life examples of CBR in action from this menu.
If you want to locate the examples that are most relevant to your work, you can filter these examples by subject and region, as well as by the gender and age(s) of the population being served.
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In the Community section you can:
•Participate in conversations (discussions) with other members of the INCLUDE community
•View the results of every poll question included in the course
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Finally, you can view a set of additional resources related to CBR in the Resource library.
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Finally, you can view a set of additional resources related to CBR in the Resource library.
