The purpose of the course is to develop the skills, knowledge and understanding amongst young disabled people in the Commonwealth, so they feel able to and wish to play a leadership role in Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs / OPDs).
We would like to welcome all of you onto the first Module of the CDPF Disabled Youth Leadership Course. We are running this course from now to the end of March 2024 as our contribution to Commonwealth Year of Youth. There are around 150 of you who have been selected because you are interested in becoming leaders of the Disabled People’s Movement. We have developed this course because as the umbrella organisation representing over 90 DPOs across 50 Commonwealth countries we are aware of the age gap between the current leaders and the 60% of the Commonwealth population under 30. We will be holding seminars with those leaders to explore ways of making their DPOs more representative.
Modules
- Implications of Paradigm Shift Individual/Medical to Social/Human Rights Approach
- Organising for Disability Equality and the Struggle for Equality
- Ensuring Equity within the Disabled People’s Movement – Impairment, Gender, Ethnicity, Age, Class, Rural/Urban, etc
- Building DPO Democracy and Building National Coalitions
- Understanding Budgets, Project Funding and Writing Bids
- Building Successful Campaigns to Influence Government
These presentations and the written notes will be open access. These materials are to generate questions and discussions that can be addressed in your monthly live on-line regional meetings. Each participant will be sent information on access to regional groups and other relevant information. Each region has mentors from the CDPF Executive. These meetings take place in the last week of the month. You will be able to send questions in for discussion. Recordings of these regional seminars will be put on-line and will be password protected for participants only.
We hope that participants on the course will be able to make a presentation at the end of the course, from which we will ascertain that you have put your learning to good use. Most of all CDPF hopes you will join in the struggle for Disabled People’s rights and Equality and help to make a lasting transformation.