Lack of opportunities is the real disability
Written by Adriana Álvarez, Project Manager at Poverty Stoplight
The concept of disability has changed over the years. In the beginning, disabilities were thought of as physical or intellectual “deficiencies” of the people who suffered them. However, in 1997, the World Health Organization proposed a new way of understanding and measuring disabilities, taking into account the relationship between people and their environments, and the conditions that allow or prevent their integration and participation in society.
In Paraguay, we still have a lot of work to do in order to fully understand the social disabilities of our citizens. However, there are organizations that have begun to create environments with equal opportunities for everyone, understanding that this is a crucial step forward. At Fundación Paraguaya, we have joined in this effort by attempting to eliminate existing barriers that exclude people in society. A few ways we do this is by promoting financial inclusion and developing the Poverty Stoplight, a methodology for poverty measurement and intervention.
To this end, we also partnered with Agora Paraguay and the German organization Lemonaid Charitea a year ago to develop a financial inclusion strategy for people with visual disabilities. During the implementation of this project, we worked to promote access to credit for entrepreneurship, self-employment and training in financial literacy, aiming to guarantee opportunities and autonomy for people with disabilities.
This collective effort resulted in the Emprendé Paraguay program, an initiative for people with visual disabilities who had a business idea, but needed assistance to carry it out. This program included a complete training course with innovative tools to become a successful entrepreneur, providing materials adapted to individual needs. As a result, many of the participants started new ventures or used the loans to grow the businesses they already had, becoming generators of income for their families.
Additionally, five young people with visual disabilities participated along with hundreds of other people this year in the Paraguayan Forum of Entrepreneurs, organized by Fundación Paraguaya’s Entrepreneurial Education team. This event created an inclusive space and an environment of equality for all young people where the participants gained knowledge about identity and innovation, forming lasting friendships in the process. And in the case of Camila, Liz and Jessica — our young entrepreneurs with visual disabilities — they also won the talent competition.
These experiences only confirm that the term “disability” must be understood mainly as the lack of opportunities and adequate living conditions in one’s environment, rather than a physical limitation affecting only the individual. The creation of these inclusive spaces and opportunities should be the task and commitment of all sectors of society; this is the only way we can achieve a country with the capacity to integrate all the people who are part of it.
