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Taking away prejudices and creating awareness about the daily challenges of persons with a disability is the first, crucial step for achieving more inclusive local policies. This is what we advocated for at the United Cities and Local Governments World Congress.

In October, I started as the consortium coordinator of We are Able! I have worked for the Dutch NGO Cordaid, where I coordinated a number of advocacy trajectories, mostly on food and agriculture, migration and refugees. Prior to that I have also done advocacy at EU level, working for NGO networks, and also at the level of the United Nations.

On September 12, the annual Regional Learning and Sharing Event for the We are Able! programme took place in Burundi. From seven countries, participants came together for one week to reflect on the past year, share experiences, learn, discover and further develop plans for 2023. All with one mission: to promote disability inclusion.

A delegation of We are Able! was present at the World Urban Forum that took place in Katowice/Poland June 26-30. This international conference was a good opportunity to increase awareness on the need for disability inclusion at different levels and to learn about inclusive governance.

“In Africa, people with disabilities are the poorest of the poor. They happen to be disabled, but poverty is the issue.” Shuaib Chalklen, the CEO of the African Disability Forum, one of the partners of the We are Able! consortium, is deeply motivated to stand up for people with disabilities in Africa.

One year and a half into the project, the We are Able! consortium convened in Utrecht for a series of workshops and presentations. The representatives from all partner organisations reflected on the work of the past months and exchanged plans and ideas for the coming ones.

Making members of Parliament aware of the Sustainable Development Goals is one of the goals of a campaign setup by several organisations, amongst whom We are Able! partner VNGI. The delegation met with Member of Parliament Hülya Kat, who ‘adopted’ sustainable development goal 1 (no poverty) and 2 (no hunger).

Are our training programmes fully accessible for persons with disabilities? What barriers have we (un)consciously put in place, which hinder their full participation? How can we ensure our training sessions are inclusive to everyone?

During the Global Disability Summit 2022, a side event was organised on February 17, 2022 from 10h00-11h15 CET titled “We are Able! Are YOU able too? - Co-creating Inclusive Governance for Access to Basic Resources that Leaves No-One Behind.”