Danish Disability Fund

APPLICATION

To be filled in by DPOD
Disability Fund ref. no.
Date received

B: partnersHIP INTERVENTION

or small-scale project(max. DKK 500,000)

1. Cover page
Grant modality
(Insert X) / Partnership intervention: / Small-scale project: x
Danish applicant organisation (financially responsible): / Landsforeningen LEV
Contact person for the project: / Name: Sune Min Barker
Email:
Phone: 5357 6313
Other Danish partner(s):
(if relevant)
South Partner(s): / Future Stars Self Advocacy Organization (FS)
Myanmar Autism Association (MAA), Myanmar Downs Syndrome Association (MDSA) and Eden Centre for Disabled Children (ECDC)
Project title: / The first seed - ID family network
Country(ies): / Myanmar (Burma) / Country’s GDP per capita: 1420.50
Project period: / Commencement date: 01.01.2018 / Completion date:
30.06.2019 / Total number of months: 18
Total amount applied for:
Is this a new activity? / [x] Yes, a new activity
[ ] An activity in extension of a previous project, namely:
Is this a re-submission? / (i.e. a revised version of a previously submitted application).
[x] No
[ ] Yes, date/year of previous application:
Do you want a response letter in / [ ] Danish or
[x] English
Insert synthesis of the project in Danish
(max. 200 words. This will be used as a presentation of the project on DPOD’s website)
Dette projekt handler om at LEVs nye partnere i Myanmar under projektperioden skal modtage støtte til at skabe et produktivt uformelt netværk med en fælles strategi for hvor de vil hen og hvordan de vil gøre det. Samtidig skal partnerne opkvalificeres inde for OD. Projektet har derfor 2 fokusområder:
1) Projektet inddrager 4 nye partnere i Myanmar, som skal støttes til at udvikle et uformelt netværk. Arbejdet imellem organisationerne har hidtil kun været sporadisk og de har været uenige om hvad der er bedst for udviklingshæmmede. Nu vil de nye partnere gerne støttes i at skabe et netværk, der skal sammentømre dem og skabe en fælles platform af vidensdeling og en større politisk fællesstemme til Myanmars handicap paraply (Myanmar Federation of Persons with Disabilities) i Myanmar, som skal komme flere rights holders and duty bearers til gode.
2) De nye partnere skal også gennemføre basal organisationsudvikling; især indenfor finans, HR og kommunikation, som har vist sig at være nødvendig. Organisationerne er kun nogle få år gamle og mangler en del kvalifikationer. Det er en vigtig forudsætning, at organisationerne får den nødvendige støtte, hvis de skal kunne udføre kvalificeret rettighedsbaseret arbejde i fremtiden.
Forundesøgelsen (HP 325-126) til dette projekt fandt sted i starten af 2017, hvor de to 2 fokusområder i dette projekt fyldte meget hos deltagerne.
2. Narrative application
  1. WHAT IS THE CONTEXT AND THE PROBLEM? (suggested length: 2-3 pages)

1.a The overall context (max. 1-1½ page*)

Myanmar ranks 145 in the UNDP Human Development Index (2016) and is characterized by a rapid developing economy, enormous differences between urban and rural areas, weak infrastructure, armed conflicts and poverty. Myanmar is a country where decades of neglect on human development has hampered the quality of the education system. The country has its own exclusive alphabet and language in which all education is taught. This puts severe restrictions to the level of eduction in new technologies and language.The country is also characterized by an impressive drive for catching up and reclaiming the previous leading position in South East Asia prior to the military iron grip in which the country and its population was held for the past five decades. LEV experienced the immense drive to make a positive change in the society during the pre-study in Myanmar (HP 325-126) 2017.

Persons with Disability in Myanmar

Numbers from the latest Myanmar National Disability survey carried out in 2014 states a total of 2,311,250 people (4.6 %) have at least one type of disability. The most common type of disability is visually impaired (2.5%), followed by physical disability (1.9%), intellectual disabilities (1.7 % ) and lastly hearing impairment (1.3 %). The disability prevalence is higher among females (4.8%) than males (4.4%)[1]. WHO assumed that around 15% of all population is suffering from disability[2]. It may be due to differences in definitions and methodology and because the information collected on this topic is usually under-reported[3].

As in many other developing countries, PWDs are economically, socially and educationally disadvantaged. Several surveys have also documented that PWD in Myanmar are significantly more vulnerable and underprivileged in terms of access to education, decent livelihood, housing, health services, food security and information about rights compared to persons with no disabilities.

National authorities are not accustomed to collaborating with civil society organisations, or sharing information with them. Collaboration between duty bearers, international non-government organisations (INGOs), government organisations and disabled people’s organisations in Myanmar is weak. The Myanmar government does not offer any guidance or encouragement for the growth of networking space for stakeholders to collectively support disability. The national federation, Myanmar Federation of People with Disabilities (MFPD), is working on creating more awareness in the society, but it was constituted in 2014 has basic structural challenges as other young organisations.

Moreover, the organisations work for and with people with intellectual disabilities (PWIDs) have not found a common ground to work from. There are disagreements among the organisations and little funding opportunities. Hence, project results on the political level may be modest, but there is a lot that can be done on local level.

There is little focus on promoting public awareness about disabilities, which is mostly related to superstition, more specifically the “karma law” - being one’s own fault. Thus, it is difficult for LEV’s partners to get sympathy and support in the community, due to the little acknowledgement of intellectual disabilities (ID). This religious belief makes it difficult to make advocacy work, because many people, including the parents to the children with intellectual disabilities (CWIDs) think it is their own fault and deserve their circumtstances.

Besides the need for public awareness, many PWIDs and their parents also need access to information. As today, there is also a huge lack of understanding ID within the rights holders. Many parents are not aware that they have children with ID or know what to do[4]. It is mostly women who take care of the CWIDs, hence there is also gender inequality among the target groups, which was experienced during the pre-study and is a general issue for LEV’s partners around the world.

LEV’s pre-study in Myanmar showed that the organizations do not have enough funding to support and promote their programs. Limited and insecure funding resources combined with low donor interest in intellectual disabilities (ID) directly affect the organisations. There are also limited organisational and human resources available to disabled people’s organisations. Little financial support and resources has resulted in organisations facing an acute shortage of adequately skilled personnel and consultants, to not only generate funds, but also to effectively meet the needs of people with disabilities and their families. The conditions are better in the capital, Yangon, but it is still an overall issue. Concurrently with the organisatins do outreach work, the number of beneficiaries grow who display the poorest of the poor.

1.b Specific challenges faced by those groups of persons with disabilities, or their organisations, for whom the project aims to bring about change

The challenge of low awareness about PWIDs in the society and among themselves is a challenge that feeds into the first direct challenge this application targets: Lack of collaboration within LEV’s partners and the ID movement as a whole, due to unorganised approaches and disagreements, which result in weakened support to their rights holders.

LEV’s new partners are very young non governmental organisations (NGOs) that were formalised only a few years ago (see partner profiles). They have existed longer though as civil society initiatives, but due to little organisational experience they focus on positioning themselves in the disability movement and their own work. Moreover, the organisations struggle because their target groups are not fully segmented, meaning that the same group of PWIDs could fit into all the ID NGOs. Many of the the organisational challenges resemble each other within the organisations and could be handled, if they looked more at the similarities and started to communicate more with each other, but this is not the case today.

LEV’s partners are members of MFPD and it represents 4 thematic disabilities (visually impaired, physical disabled, intellectual disabilites and hearing impaired) that have a seat in the MFPD. A maximum of 3 challenges can be raised each year within thematic disability. It has been a challenge for the ID NGOs to agree on the 3 challenges due to disagreements about which challenge is the most crude, which method is the best and which organisation is the most qualified to represent PWIDs among the other disability organisations. MFPD do not know which organisation they should listen to and the other disability organisations question the level of competence within the ID organisations. The lack of collaboration makes it difficult for the ID NGOs to advocate on behalf of their target groups within the disability movement.

At the same time they mention the importance of representing “one voice” and there is a common wish and understanding among the ID NGOs to collaborate with each other because they know that they share the same vision for PWIDs, but none of them have taken the lead start this so far. The reason is that they are challenged with have limited resources. Hence, they prioritise to support themselves and their own beneficiaries who are also struggling due to the scarce resources.

The second direct challenge LEVs application targets are the specific challenges each organisation has within organisational development. A major reason to the missing action of prioritising the organising of the ID movement is because the ID NGOs struggle with limited resources and lack of knowledge within basic administrative capacity building. The NGOs were initiated by parents who have children with intellectual disabilities (CWIDs) and passionate people who wanted make a positive change in the community. Most of the work is done by parents who volunteer and do not have formal educations or experiences that makes them capable to administrate NGOs. Through the workshops and plenary discussions during the pre-study in Myanmar it became evident that most of the people working within the ID NGOs do not have formal educations or experience within administration or organisational work. They need tools and knowledge (understanding the concepts) within basic organisational development e.g. how to plan ahead, how to communicate and approach different organisations and institutions outside their organisations or how to provide administrative tasks for new and old volunteers. Today, the NGOs are challenged by a lot of demands and little knowledge about what to do and how to prioritise. Hence, their work is made up by a lot of ad hoc solutions instead of prioritising the tasks in relation to an organisational strategy.

In relation to the abovementioned another overall challenge is the difficulty of finding information . As mentioned in 1.a, information is limited in Myanmar. Little material that has been translated into Myanmar and the level of english proficieny within the ID NGOs is low. They also need basic organisational development knowledge in order to understand available material, if any. Hence, the NGOs are in a challenging situation that can take years to overcome.

  1. WHICH EXPERIENCES AND RESULTS DOES THE PROJECT BUILD UPON? (suggested length: 2-3 pages)

2.a Knowledge about or previous experience of cooperation with the South partner

Is the partnership between the Danish applicant and the South partner organisation known to the Danish Disability Fund, i.e. described in (an)other application(s) in previous years?

Yes / x / Insert the six-figure Danish Disability Fund reference number(s): HP 325-126
No

Does the project’s theme lies within the partners’ normal field of work?

Yes / x
No

Before engaging in the pre-study and taking contact to potential partners in Myanmar, LEV conducted a screening and research on the country guided by Inclusion International’s director, Connie Laurin Bowie, former Inclusion International’s regional representative for the Asia Pacific region, Nagase Osamu and the Danish Association of the Blind’s (DAB) Project Manager (PM) in Myanmar. In this process Eden Centre for Disabled Children (ECDC) and Future Stars (FS) were appointed to being the most capable and relevant partners to LEV due to similar target groups, advocacy work and Parents Self Help Groups (PSHGs). During the pre-study both NGOs were found highly relevant, but Myanmar Autism Association (MAA) and Myanmar Downs Syndrome Association (MDSA) also proved to be qualified and relevant in terms of working with the same target groups (As mentioned in 1.b) and wanting to strengthen the overall ID movement. MAA and MDSA were not targeted as potential partners prior to the pre-study, because there was very little knowledge and information about them among the other organisations and the internet.

In terms of organisational competences, ECDC have a little more experience working with international NGOs (INGOs) compared to the otherpartners. MAA have a small training centre for children with autism which has also enabled the organisation to gain experience with managing funds and organising. FS) and MDSA as organisations have the least experience with INGOs and managing funds. However, within FS, there are 2 highly competent people with a lot of project management experience.

It is important to imply that all the organisations have identified the same key challenges.

2.b Assessment of partner capacity

All partner organisations have experience in hosting workshops for their beneficiaries and administrating funds of a size acccording to their proportion of the applied project. The funds of the applied project will be transferred every 2nd quarter. Therefore the amount of funds are relatively small and easy to administrate and it is assessed that all organisations can manage it.

Nyunt Aung, who was project manager for the pre-study, has several years of experience working for INGOs as a programme manager (see annex I.) and he has had responsibilty for annual project budgets that exceed this project budget. He is also experienced in administrating projects of this size along with budgets and activities. This is also the reason why he was chosen by all the organisations as the project manager in South (PMS) the applied project. This said, it is still important to remember that LEVs and DPOD’s guidelines have elements that are new to all of the organisations and the staff. Therefore, Nyunt Aung will need instructions and adjustment time when the projects starts and LEV’s project manager will focuson providing sufficient guidance.

All the organisations have the organisational capacity to administrate the finances of the project by means of having experienced volunteers who are working professionally with budgetting and finances. ECDC and MAA also have the experience of administrating larger funds from different partners. The organisation want to divide tasks and responisibilities between them. Hence, it was agreed among the organisations that the part time accountant should be connected to MAA.

2.c Learning of relevance to the application

It is a part of LEV’s international strategy to support PWIDs and their relatives by supporting the development of LEV’s partners (see annex H.). The partners in Myanmar may be relatively new, but the approach and chosen working method with the organisations are based on many years of experience. CISU- and DPOD funded projects with same strategy and point of departure have taken place in several countries e.g. South Africa, Vietnam, Uganda, and Ghana that all exists today. That said, LEV has gained new knowledge and experience about the Myanmar partners and their unique context, which have been combined with the existing experience and well established methods that are presented in this application. The primary main learning that is relevant in this project is that everything takes time. It is important to pay special attention to the organisations’ developmental process and support them when needed. The Myanmar partners think differently due to cultural differences between Myanmar and Denmark. They also need to get accustomed to LEV’s working methods and vice versa.

In the beginning of the project development process, the plan was to support a formal network, but step by step it became evident that it was too many steps ahead compared to where the organisations are today. Based on experience and discussions, an informal network was chosen for this project instead. Everything takes time and LEV does not want to force the organisations into a process that is too fast, because from a sustainability perspective, it is the organisations who have to agree and carry on the network, in which way they find it most efficient. This they will find out gradually during the project process.

Based on experience, LEV assumes that the informal network clarifies the agreements and disagreements among the ID NGOs and secures ”one voice” among the other disability organisation and in MFPD that will also benefit rights holders and duty bearers in the long run.