Jacqueline Mutere is a Kenyan disability rights advocate who participated in a training in January 2016, in the city of Nairobi. The training was developed through the RightsNow!: Strong Communities through Enforcing the Rights of Persons with Disabilities project by members of the RightsNow! consortium, including Mobility International USA (MIUSA), the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF), the U.S. International Council on Disabilities (USICD), and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) in partnership with the United Disabled Persons of Kenya (UDPK).
Transcript
Woman (Jacqueline Mutere): Hi, my name is Jackie and I come from an organization called Grace Agenda, that supports survivors of rape from the post-election violence, many of whom were women and girls with disabilities. I am a member of the UDPK, that's the United Disabled Persons of Kenya, that is participating in the MIUSA and DREDF training, RightsNow! training. And I do appreciate the training that I've just come through. It has given me a chance to meet new faces, meet other people also from the disability movement, and it has helped to strengthen my technical capacity in enabling to integrate the use of our laws into the work that I do.
A lot of it is programmatic, but now I'll be able to have a bit more strengthened advocacy, be able to speak more, speak with confidence to government, quoting what they are supposed to do and what they are not supposed to do, knowing that it is the rights of persons with disabilities to access these services from the government. I'm also very grateful that we have got plans to be supported in future and the future of the work so that, even while they are supporting us I appreciate their technical visits, and I'd appreciate physical visits from MIUSA, and from DREDF also, so they would actually learn what is happening on the ground. They'd have physical evidence of what is happening on the ground. And also for them to learn first-hand actually, the various aspects of the programs that they would be supporting us to implement.
Technical visits help a lot also, so that we have hands-on knowledge of actually what's going on on the ground and not an unfounded story because it is really easy to give you stories. And so a technical visit would be highly appreciated, a physical one. It will also help us to have an objective view of the perspective of our work. And it will help us also to strengthen the programs of the field work. This is just to appreciate MIUSA, DREDF, and the RightsNow! and the capacity that they have built us. Thank you.
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