Access to Essential Services for Marginalized Persons with Disabilities in Palestine

Palestine

This project aimed at responding to the essential needs of disabled persons in Palestine and encompassed three main components: 1. strengthening adapted educational programs and psychosocial support for children with disabilities in targeted areas of the Gaza Strip; 2. the development of mobile rehabilitation services for populations in deprived Areas C and Bedouin communities of the West Bank; 3. providing support to multi-disciplinary rehabilitation services for children with disabilities, and particularly children with cerebral palsy and multiple disabilities, in 3 governorates of the Gaza Strip. This holistic project achieved its targets with remarkable success, impacting the lives and well-being of the beneficiaries: - 124 children with disabilities benefited from assistive devices; covering mobility, hearing and visual devices, adapted and adjustable students desks that can be modified based on children’s physical needs, enlarged books. - 101 school kits including stationary and students’ books were purchased and donated some of the most economically challenged children with disabilities, paired with orphanhood, unemployed households, households with more than one child with disability in the same family, inter alia. - 33 teachers received capacity building to respond to the children with disabilities (CwDs') needs. - 219 CwDs benefited from 132 collective psychosocial support sessions and 182 individual psychosocial support sessions. This also involved teachers and family members. - 204 CwDs benefited from 43 collective educational counselling sessions and 69 individual educational counselling sessions, in addition to 202 family members. - 160 CwDs and 161 children without disabilities and 139 parents of CwDs and children without disabilities actively participated in child-to-child activities including drama, sports and craft making activities. - 954 family members received education and awareness raising sessions by the mobile team. - 245 PwDs benefited from medical health services (disposal medical supplies and medical referrals of PWDs for disability related medical conditions). - 209 PWDs received 328 Assistive Device (AD) items. - 51 PWDs benefitted from basic home modifications and adaptations to facilitate indoor mobility. - 2.7 Identification and physical adaptation of 10 schools and health care centers so they are physically accessible to persons with disabilities. - indoor accessibility adaptation of 5 health care centers and 10 schools (included toilets, hallways, widening door widths, and ramps in the main entrances)