Current Funding Strategies of Development and Social

An International Summit Conference on Independent Living
Washington, DC
September 21-25, 1999
___________
Current Funding Strategies of Development
and Social-Change Agencies

Introduction
The focus of the last day of the conference was twofold: to give participants the opportunity to learn about specific US and international funding sources which have supported independent living efforts and to discuss the various types of funding which currently support independent living. Additionally, recommendations were made as to how to access more funds as well as to expand the circle of funding sources.

US Based International Agencies & Organizations
The first presenter was Janet Allem from the United States Agency for International Development. When preparing a proposal, Allem stressed the importance of insuring that the goals of the proposal coincide with those of the funder, that goals are clearly stated and specific procedures to measure how those goals will be met are also clearly articulated.
She cautioned participants about the importance of financial accountability as well as the need for a plan to generate financial self-sufficiency. Allem concluded that USAID is still not committing significant funds to disability-specific projects, but retains a major emphasis on disability-prevention issues through its maternal/child health program, as well as some provisions for simple rehabilitation services such as prosthetics for those injured in war or civil conflict.
Allem listed the following projects currently receiving funds:1) the Egypt office is providing capacity building funds to the Alexandria Rehabilitation Hospital; 2) in Guatemala the Agency works with two organizations to strengthen disability rights legislation; 3) the USAID West Bank office is providing advocacy training and capacity-building to the General Union of the Disabled; 4) USAID Kenya is providing computers and training to people blinded by the Embassy bombing in Nairobi.
In summary, she pointed out that disabled individuals are often included in larger programs without a disability component, for example micro-enterprise programs tend to be inclusive. Civil society strengthening programs also provide a mechanism for helping disability-related NGOs to develop.
USAID offers technical support to assist organizations in both proposal writing and organizational planning to maintain self-sufficiency. For information, Contact Janet Allem at (email) jallem@usaid.gov.
Next, David Levin representing the United States Information Agency gave a brief overview of the agency's involvement in supporting independent living efforts. Recent examples included sponsorship of the DPI World Council Meeting held in Washington D.C. in 1996 and the National Clearinghouse on Disability and Exchange, a five-year project being conducted by Mobility International USA. The Clearinghouse advises organizations involved in international visits and exchanges about how to make their programs more accessible and provides connections for disabled Americans interested in studying, teaching or volunteering overseas. Clearinghouse details are available via email: clearhinghouse@miusa.org.
In addition to disability specific initiatives, USIA offers funding for Americans to study overseas by way of Fulbright scholarships, as well as to bring international visitors to the US to explore scientific and cultural aspects of American society. In recent years the number of disabled scholars awarded Fulbright support has increased. Organizational grants to US agencies working with foreign partners are also available to fund grassroots exchanges of citizens working on a number of issues including: law, media, and conflict resolution. For more information on programs offered by USIA, contact David Levin at dlevin@usia.gov or go to their website: www.usia.gov.
The final presenter was Stephanie Gottlieb representing the Ashoka Foundation. Ashoka works in 33 countries in Latin America, Asia, Central Europe and Africa. Rather than funding projects, Ashoka invests in individuals, providing three-year grants which offer financial and other support for "social entrepreneurs." Ashoka has developed criteria to assess if people who are investing their energy to create social change also meet their requirements for support. A number of those selected by Ashoka as social entrepreneurs have been people with disabilities working to change their communities, and a few of these were given support to attend the IL Summit. For more information go to: www.socialchange.net or www.ashoka.org.
After these presentations, participants discussed the wide variety of mechanisms being used to fund independent living efforts throughout the world.
Other International Agencies
Some disability groups in developing countries received their initial funding for independent living efforts through the United Nations to support the International Year of Disabled Persons (1981). In 1980 the UN set up The Trust Fund for Disabled Persons and since, this entity has funded many projects in support of the Year and then the Decade of Disabled Persons. This fund has dwindled since the UN Decade concluded, but continues to support small projects in developing countries. The InterAmerican Development Bank has funded projects in both the Caribbean and in Central America. Efforts to convince both the IDB and the World Bank to fund independent living projects have born little fruit thus far.
Funding Approaches in Various Countries
In Bosnia, disability organizations are beginning to partner with each other as well as with other international organizations to develop long-term sustainable projects. Disability-related funding has primarily targeted emergency situations and has been very short-term. Currently Threshhold, a Finnish organization is funding small projects to assist disabled Bosnians.
One of the barriers to funding IL projects in Malawi is that disability is not viewed as a human rights issue, but rather as a charity issue. All funds dedicated to empowering disabled people are raised by disabled people themselves while the government continues to allocate funds to charities which don't provide services to empower disabled people.
In Cambodia, disability organizations have located some funding by collaborating with other small groups in pursuing projects from the development agencies. Some independent living efforts are funded by the Finnish government through its development agency, FINNIDA.
In Brazil, early social and athletic groups of people with disabilities often supported themselves through the selling of lottery tickets and candy, and crafts production. The goal of these income-generation projects was usually to enable their members to contribute financially to their families. In the late 1980s the Centro de Vida Independente in Rio de Janeiro, the first independent living center to be established outside of the industrialized world, began to train workers for employers, and uses the management and administrative fees from these contracts to fund core independent living services. The CVI of Rio has developed a comprehensive work-readiness program that prepares disabled people who have never worked for jobs in the mainstream labor market. In this way, the CVI offers services that in more materially affluent societies would be provided by rehabilitation centers and state-funded social services. The success of this model has stimulated the growth during the 1990s of an additional 15 independent living centers throughout the country.
Currently, eight cooperatives for personal assistance users exist in Sweden, administering the government-funded PAS program. Access to PAS services is seen as the mainstay of independent living, in conjunction with accessibility initiatives and anti-discrimination legislation. This model demonstrates how a disability-run entity can qualify for government subsidy of service provision. Similar to Brazil, the administrative fees charged by the cooperatives for providing a service, are utilized to pay staff and expand their service base.
Most foreign non-governmental organizations working in Vietnam are concentrating their energies on provision of basic medical, rehabilitation and training services to assist the often-isolated members of Vietnam's disabled community to participate in the family-based economy. Support for independent living oriented groups is not yet available, although recently there have been some efforts to provide jobs for disabled Vietnamese in the foreign-supported wheelchair production workshops.
Beginning in the late 1970s, independent living centers throughout the US, funded in part by Federal monies, were established through the passage of Title VII of the Rehabilitation Act of 1978. During the 1980s and 90s the availability of Federal and other support led to the establishment of more than 300 centers in all 50 states.
While this Federal funding enabled the number of independent living centers to increase, some feel that this development caused the IL movement to lose its grassroots nature and to become severed from the disability rights movement. Many independent living centers no longer have the latitude to provide advocacy and community development services because their federal funding restricts them to more outcome-measurable services. Instead of defining disability community needs from the bottom up, centers find themselves driven by federally mandated priorities and processes.
Guatemala has had success approaching private US foundations, such as the Kellogg Foundation to secure funding for materials. Networking with community leaders, such as the mayor, has resulted in material support, including free space to house programs. Other financial support has been found by taking a pro-active entrepreneurial approach for example, exploring ways to bring tourist traffic to underdeveloped areas.
Many countries also face the barrier that funders want to see immediate results, even though experience has taught us that in reality there must be preparation and training over time before impact becomes evident.
In Germany, large social development agencies ran the institutions, and it has been difficult for grassroots organizations to create a public identity that would attract support and funding. More recently, the grassroots organizations have been able to use the media effectively to establish their own identity and are now attracting more financial support.
In the Philippines, Kampi, a federation of grassroots disability organizations, receives some funding from Denmark. Over three years, their rehabilitation projects to assist and educate children with disabilities have been successful and grown, attracting renewed funding for the upcoming years.
For most of this century, the needs of disabled people in Russia were considered the responsibility of the state; as a result there were neither charities nor independent living organizations of people with disabilities. Following the collapse in 1990 of the Soviet system, disabled people confronted both the end of state-provided social supports and the first real opportunities for self-organization. Since, both US and Canadian development agencies have supported efforts of the All-Russian Society of Disabled Persons and smaller regional disability groups to adopt an independent living orientation, develop public education outreach and small businesses. In the case of the US, small grants were awarded to domestic independent living organizations, including the World Institute on Disability and Whirlwind Wheelchairs International, to provide guidance and training to Russian disability groups. In 1995, the Federal Law on the Social Protection of Persons with Disabilities was enacted, requiring that assistance be provided to disability organizations, though very little of this law has been implemented.
Under apartheid in South Africa, disability benefits were four times higher for whites than for black people. In 1981, the Self-Help Association of Paraplegics in Soweto set up a factory employing primarily disabled people, capitalized by outside assistance for the physical building. The initial thirty workers received only transportation and a single meal a day for the first six months of the factory's operation.
Strategies to Increase Funding for Independent Living Programs and Projects
1) Design awareness programs with the purpose of educating donors that disability is a social/human rights issue as opposed to strictly a health/medical issue.
2) Improve the sustainability of disability programs in developing countries by developing partnerships between disability groups and other organizations struggling for social change.
3) Recognizing that some development agencies (CIDA, SIDA, JICA, FINNIDA) have had IL-oriented disability policies since the early 1980s, initiate an on-going mechanism for these agencies to exchange strategies and experience with other development agencies who are interested in IL programs and projects. This mechanism should involve NGOs which have experience in implementing IL-oriented projects in other countries, so that all can benefit and learn from this process.
4) The majority of disability-related external funding provided to poor countries is earmarked for prevention projects and established charities and rarely reaches grassroots organizations of disabled people. One approach to shifting more funds to IL-oriented programs would be to reserve a specified percentage of the overall budget of development assistance agencies. A second approach, which has proven effective for increasing support for women in development programs, has been to require that women are served agency-wide through each and every program budget.
5) There are a growing number of disability-directed groups in donor countries who now have 15-20 years of practical experience in working with governments, disability organizations and other constituencies in developing countries. They have now accumulated skills, experiences and international development strategies, comprising a unique knowledge base that should be shared with emerging international disability leaders.

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