Disability and Poverty Reduction Working Group and the Terms of Reference

Poverty reduction programmes are becoming the main frameworks within which development aid is channelled to low income countries. People with disabilities, women and men, children, young people and adults and their families have seldom been taken into account adequately in these mainstream development frameworks.

The Global Partnership on Disability and Development (GPDD) established a Working Group on Disability and Poverty Reduction to facilitate the inclusion of people with disabilities in poverty reduction programmes.

Working Group aims and activities

The WG aims at identifying national initiatives where inclusion of disability issues and people with disabilities would be appropriate and significant. The WG compiles and disseminates information, guidelines, manuals, tools and good practice on the inclusion of disability aspects in poverty reduction and other relevant development programmes.

It established this website to serve as a joint platform for collaboration with all partners in the effort to strengthen advocacy, understanding, knowledge and skills. There are also some field projects by partners that support the work of the Working Group.

The members are volunteers selected from the Coordinating Task Force of the GPDD. The current members of the Working Group are:

• Andreas Pruisken (CBM): andreas.pruisken[at]cbm-de.org (Chair of the Working Group)
• Euhrasia Mbewe (WFD): baluwa[at]hotmail.com
• Francoise de Keersmaker (HI): fdekeersmaeke[at]handicap-international.de
• Robert Ransom (ILO): Robert.ransom[at]ilo.org
• James Wandha (Parliament of Uganda): jmwandh[at]parliament.go.ug
• Ronald Wiman (STAKES): Ronald.wiman[at]stakes.fi ( Editor-in-Chief of this site at STAKES)

The Coordinating Task Force of GPDD can extend the WG and invite other Members of the Alliance or selected resource persons to participate in the work or specific projects. The WG works mainly through e-mail and periodic teleconferences.

Read the official Terms of Reference.