CBR Education and Training for

Empowerment (CREATE)
CBR Education
and Training for
Empowerment
(CREATE)
• Not formally an advocacy
organization
<> when working in rural
communities with people
with disabilities, naturally
falls into this role
• Work based on Community-
based rehabilitation (CBR)/
disability-inclusive
development
<> Promotion of human
rights
CREATE: Background

• South Africa has ratified the UN

Convention on the Rights of Persons
with Disabilities, and has one of the
most progressive constitutions in the
world, and yet too many people are far
from experiencing these rights.
• Rural people with disabilities, most of
whom are poor and many of whom are
women and children, are especially
vulnerable to rights abuses.
CREATE’s
approach
• Work is needed at a
national & societal level to
create change
> also a strong need for
grassroots work to change
things where people live.
• CREATE works primarily at
‘the people’s level’
> Focus: Duty-bearers and
power holders responsible
for realising people’s rights;
Traditional leaders,
healthcare workers and local
government officials
CREATE’s approach
• In the spirit of nothing about us
without us, everything is done in
partnership with people with
disabilities and their families.
• Educating people about disability,
dispelling myths and
misunderstandings that lead to
negative attitudes, sharing
information about human rights
➢stimulate reflection on the
practices that lead to abuse and
exclusion
➢communities themselves
beginning to effect change
 …at the same time
people with disabilities
themselves often…

• hold negative attitudes towards

themselves (self-stigma);
• lack knowledge about their rights and
the services & opportunities available to
them.
• The work CREATE’s fieldworkers,
disabled themselves, do is especially
powerful in transforming how they see
themselves, and encouraging them
towards change
 Results and
measuring them?
RESULTS MATRIX
“Inclusive development for persons with
disabilities: Supporting the development
of community based rehabilitation (CBR)
in South Africa”
Examples of CREATE’s
advocacy work
The Impendulo project: working with traditional leaders in
rural areas to educate them in disability rights and address
barriers to accessing justice in traditional courts for people
with disabilities. Much of rural South Africa is under
traditional leadership (in KZN province, largely Zulu
culture/isiZulu-speaking), and traditional beliefs and attitudes
often underpin rights abuses and discrimination against
people with disabilities. Our partner in this EU- funded
project is Justice and Woman (JAW), a gender organisation
also working in rural KZN. The project focuses specifically on
the intersections of gender and disability in rural
communities, and has been an opportunity for CREATE to
learn more about incorporating gender in our work
Khulumani Collective project: Again with traditional leaders, this time
focusing on land and health rights for marginalised groups, including
people with disabilities. Another EU-funded project, this is a
partnership with five other organisations, each working with a different
marginalised group (including LGBTQIA, women, people with disability)
Action on the right to education for children with disabilities: CREATE
staff play a support role to other groups and organisations advocating
in this area. One of our staff is on the School Governing Body for a
special needs school in Utukela district of KZN, and has been active in
supporting parents to speak out against poor conditions for their
children at the school (including inadequate hostel caregivers and no
nurse employed for several years, despite the high number of physically
disabled and high-medical-need learners). This has been a long-running
problem stemming not only from local staff and community politics,
but also from high-up problems in the Department of Education. It
continues a battle.
Another example of partnering with others in this area: The Centre for
Child Law (University of Pretoria) is leading a class action law suit
against the Department of Education on behalf of out-of-school
learners. They are asking partners in the field to gather information
from families who have children out of school due to disability, to build
their case. CREATE will be sharing this action among the various
community groups where we have relationships: parent groups,
disability forums and savings groups, among others. In this way we can
connect isolated and marginalised families with action for change.
Action on physical, sexual, financial and other abuse of children and
adults with disabilities. This has been a much less formal aspect of our
work, but has grown out of reports reaching CREATE fieldworkers of
specific cases of rights abuse. The Felm-funded program commencing
in 2018 includes budget to support and develop this work.
In response to increasing reports of such rights abuse cases, CREATE
developed a basic reporting form which has been shared with some of
our partners (often the local disability forum in each community), and
this is used to gather the needed information to bring to our attention.
Senior advocacy officer Mrs Bongi Zuma, herself a woman with a
disability and mother of a disabled child, usually follows these cases up
in person. She begins with guidance on how to report abuse and seek
official help, but where this fails she gets more involved in person,
engaging with local officials and if necessary taking it to district or
provincial level.
Investigating the causes of abuse is essential: in many cases it is rooted
in traditional beliefs about disability, for example that a woman (or
man) who is widowed must cleanse their “bad luck” by having sex with
a person with intellectual disability. Working with community leaders
to dispel these myths often goes a long way towards changing patterns
of abuse.
One example: A man had been abusing his child who had autism, and
this was reported to CREATE. When we went to investigate, we found
he believed that what he was doing would “help” the child (not clear
where this belief came from). When he realised that what he had been
doing was wrong, he was devastated, and the abuse ended. He was so
distressed at what he had done that he became suicidal, and had to be
referred for mental health support and intervention.
Another common pattern underpinning abuse involves the fathers of
children born with disabilities, who often abandon their families when
such a child is born. This is because many believe this to be the fault of
the mother, who is said to have cheated on her husband or otherwise
done something to anger the ancestors. In many cases it is the father’s
family who encourages him to leave. Mothers and their children are
then left unprotected and often destitute, making them more
vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. This pattern has been raised by
traditional leaders in the course of Impendulo training, and they are
discussing ways this could be addressed.