October 20, 2006
Workshop : Advocacy
Facilitated by Ms. Chihiro Kawamura, Associated Professor of Niigata Seiryo University and Ms. Makiko Horiuchi, Chief Coordinator of Center for Independent Living HANDS Setagaya.
The theme of today's program was 'Advocacy' and the purpose was to understand the basic meanings of 'discrimination' and 'human rights.'
In the morning, both Ms. Kawamura and Ms. Horiuchi presented their personal histories including their own experiences of being discriminated because of their disabilities. Ms. Horiuchi showed a video about her daily life which is carried out with help of personal assistants. The participants' attention was drawn to persona assistants. By seeing how useful and helpful the personal assistants can be for the persons with disabilities to lead an independent life, from the video the participants could learn the importance of personal assistants.
The afternoon started with participants' telling their own experiences of being discriminated. Each of them presented different scenes of discriminations like being refused to get on a bus, being stared at and laughed at by other people because of disability and so on. With patience and courage, they have all got out of their crisis.
Japanese participants including a committee member Ms. Kashiwagi and Ms. Masako Okuhira manger of international training section of JSRPD made their comments by mentioning their experiences of being discriminated and how they have overcomed.
Using the time allocated for reflection of the training, we further discussed about causes or background of discrimination they have experienced. People's attitudes, lack of adequate communication, fear of person without disabilities to compete with persons with disabilities, lack of accessibility in infrastructure, lack of information, lack of education etc were listed. Unfortunately the time was running out and the issue of 'discrimination' and 'rights' could not be fully discussed, but the course participants could understand what 'discrimination' is from today's session.
