This story originally appeared on the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Special Fund for the Disabled (SFD) website.
Senior Leadership Program (SLP) starts in Lomé.
During this training, government representatives, Togolese RC, and civil society work together to facilitate access to physical rehabilitation and promote social inclusion. USAID is sponsoring the Leadership, Management, and Governance (LMG) Project that offers training and workshops on boosting leadership, management, and financial administration skills to foster autonomy and responsible ownership within centres.
Read ICRC/SFD Director Max Deneu’s speech (en français).
Through support for the LMG Project, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance convenes government and civil society to ensure access to physical rehabilitation services and to promote social inclusion for people with disabilities.
Although SFD has
over thirty years of experience supporting physical rehabilitation centers around the world, they have recognized that one major barrier to realizing service delivery improvements is the management capacity of rehabilitation center leaders.
While visiting with LMG Project staff last week, Mr. Jozef Nagels, the Head of ICRC/SFD’s regional office in Africa, reiterated the impact that strong management skills play in ensuring long-term sustainability of physical rehabilitation services.
One reason for the strong partnership between the LMG Project and the ICRC/SFD is the recognition that leaders equipped with strong management skills are essential to the long-term sustainability of health services.
The SLP is an example of how the LMG Project advances physical rehabilitation services and disability rights. SLPs engage high-level leaders in health ministries, disabled peoples’ organizations (DPOs), and health managers. Together, they identify shared interests and challenges, develop an action plan, and implement their plan over the next nine months. The structured program provides a safe space, where the leaders and teams can strengthen their problem-solving and team-building skills.
Similarly, the LMG Project and ICRC/SFD hosted a
Regional SLP in August 2013, facilitated by the Yale Global Health Leadership Institute, convened multinational stakeholders in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to discuss physical rehabilitation services. Three participants from the SLP in Tanzania shared their insight on disability rights, and their recommendations for leaders:
- Vincent Kaduma, Disability Programme Officer, ICRC/SFD, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
- Abo Osama Abdalla Mohamed Taktook, General Secretary, Sudan National Council for Persons with Disabilities, Khartoum, Sudan
- Salma Ahmed Ali Geneif; Disability Focal Point; Sudan Disarmament, Demobilization, & Reintegration (DDR) Commission; Khartoum, Sudan
The LMG Project and ICRC/SFD’s two-pronged approach advances social inclusion and equity in health by not only building the capacity of leaders with disabilities to advocate for services, but also expanding the management capacity of physical rehabilitation providers to ensure sustainable health gains in the future.
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