By Lucinda Kerschensteiner | Founding Director
Uhambo’s Wheelchair Center in Nairobi is ramping up!
Uhambo delivered two trainings just this month to occupational therapists to develop and empower them to provide efficient and effective seating services and caregiver training to people with disabilities and their families.
The training was provided by our local Kenya partner, Nancy Mbugua, of Nanaquips who is a regional trainer of the WHO Wheelchair Service Training Package, and Megan Giljam, an occupational therapist from Shonaquip of South Africa.
The training covered important modules including:
Disability practitioners in this part of Kenya are not trained on these topcis and people with disabilities are not provided this level of service – that is why this training is so crucial to the launch of the Wheelchair Center. People in need may be provided a chair (and most likely an inappropriate one) but have not been properly fitted for it, do not know how to maintain it and face exclusion from their community. This Train the Trainer approach will allow us to reach more communities and users and create real impact. Participants were extremely pleased with their experience – they learned new skills and increased their professionalism to a new level.
The Acting Director of the National Council for Persons with Disabilities closed the training. (The NCPD is a semi-autonomous government agency whose mission is to mainstream disability issues in all aspects of socio-cultural, economic and political development.) He, too, confirmed that this level of training is necessary and missing in their region. Media was also invited and are keen to follow up with Nancy about our activities.
Our final stage of training will occur in the next few months. Many thanks to you for making this initial stage a big success and setting the stage for future development of the center!
PS We have met our initial funding goal on GlobalGiving and we will expand the project soon to show the next stage. However, donations can still be accepted on the project page!
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