Disabled people facing prejudice in Kenya have set up their own businesses with micro-loans from a Welsh non-profit organization.
Trevor Palmer founded ResponsABLE Assistance in Newport after seeing how people with disabilities were affected by the 2004 tsunami in Thailand.
The charity’s Fursa initiative offers loans between £3.45 and £34.50, as well as solar-powered mobile phones.
Trevor, who has multiple sclerosis, said there were people across the world “unable to live or be included”.
Nzembi Mosukulu, from Kenya, is unable to use his legs, but has never had a formal diagnosis. Like other disabled people around the world, she faced challenges and sometimes struggled to get food and water.
“Every time drought comes, we people with disabilities face greater challenges,” she said. “We have no food and our neighbors have no food, so no one can help each other.” However, she received help from Wales and now has a new handcycle which she uses to provide water during her drought. -prone area.
The money she makes from her business “helped me buy food and educate my children,” she says.
Francis Mutuku, president of the Kibwezi Fursa program, said before the support that people “did not consider themselves capable of carrying out an individual enterprise”.
But – in addition to the loans – they received business training which he said gave them confidence and “boosted their self-esteem”. The World Health Organization estimates that there are 1.3 billion people with disabilities worldwide, or 16% of the population, and believes that this figure is growing.
A study published in the journal Lancet Child & Adolescent Health found that almost a third of children and adolescents with disabilities had experienced violence, with children in less affluent areas being particularly vulnerable.
Nzembi is one of hundreds of people with disabilities who have benefited from the work of Trevor’s organization, which has received funding from the Welsh government.
Trevor said he was appalled at the way people with disabilities were treated in some parts of the world, especially in disaster areas and emergencies. He was caught in a terrorist attack in Ethiopia and saw how disabled people were treated in hospital afterwards.
He said: “I was in Addis Ababa and unfortunately I was involved in a terrorist incident, I was blown up.” Trevor said he saw people “pushed into corners and on the floor and not treated the same as people who can voice their complaints”. He added: “We take things for granted here so much, we take for granted that we receive certain benefits, we receive inclusion in life, which is our right, which is fine.
“But those things just don’t exist and people don’t realize that there are people in other parts of the world who don’t have anything, and they can’t live or be included.”
ResponsABLE Assistance has now received permission to dig the foundations of a solar-powered well in Makueni County to provide people with access to clean drinking water. Trevor believes that having a disability anywhere in the world is not a barrier if you have the support of those around you, and those further afield.