Eric Rosenthal, Judy Heumann, and Charlotte McClain-Nhlapo address USICD's Annual Meeting

Eric Rosenthal joined Panelists Judy Heumann of the State Department and Charlotte McClain-Nhlapo of USAID for a wide ranging discussion of the role of disability in diplomacy and development around the world.  Eric commented on the immense progress that has been made in raising the profile of international disability rights issues in the United States, but maintained that we all have hard work ahead of us to see full inclusion of disability in U.S. foreign policy. 

Judy Heumann discussed the importance of promoting civil society development internationally, and the need to be looking at ways of developing capacity much more rapidly.  She highlighted the work that she and Charlotte McClain-Nhalpo are doing to assess how organizations receiving funds from USAID and the State Department are working on disability issues and how they can move forward to ensure inclusivity of disability issues.  Heumann also gave some introductory examples into how the State Department is beginning to merge the global disability community within the international human rights platform.

Charlotte McClain-Nhlapo discussed a vision for USAID and the United States development policies in general that returns the U.S. to the vanguard of disability inclusive policy and expertise.   She elaborated on how her position will seek to elevate the issue of disability into all sectors of USAID with a no gap and zero discrimination approach while achieving tangible and lasting results.  McClain-Nhalpo affirmed USAID's political commitment to disability issues and emphasized that USAID valued partnerships with the disability community in order to achieve harmonization of disability awareness throughout the agency.

The Global Disability Rights Library project has begun its first stage of test deployments of the eGranary digital library containing disability rights resources.   Four organizations in four countries will be assisting the GDRL team by carefully reviewing a preliminary version of the Library.  These organizations will each receive an eGranary unit in the next two to three weeks.  Each eGranary will have a prototype version of the GDRL portal and several additional, supporting portals.  At each of the four locations, users and testers will thoroughly explore the library's resources and the way they are organized within the portals.  By the end of the month, each location will share extensive feedback with the GDRL team.  GDRL librarians will consult this feedback closely in considering how they can improve the library for future GDRL deployment sites.

The four prototype sites are:

·         Ethiopian Center for Disability and Development (ECDD), Ethiopia

·         Joint National Association of Persons with Disabilities (JONAPWD) , Nigeria

·         Zambia Institute of Special Education (ZAMISE), Zambia

·         Centro Ann Sullivan del Perú (CASP), Perú

"We are very grateful to the prototype sites for agreeing to take on the responsibility of sharing their insights and recommendations with the GDRL team," says GDRL Program Manager Andrea Shettle. "We hope that all 60 deployment sites will have feedback to share with us.  We want to continue improving the GDRL the best we can for as long as we have funding support to continue doing so.  But the prototype sites will be the first four locations to have a chance to use the GDRL, and I will be eager to receive their input."

Suzanne Richard has joined USICD as the Outreach Coordinator. Previously she worked as the Accessibility Specialist at the National Endowments for the Arts and served as a trained speaker for the Human Genome Project's HuGem program which addressed the legal, social and ethical implications of modern Genomics.  She served on the Maryland Governor's Advisory Committee for Congenital and Heritable Disorders, and is the author of the chapter "Dealing with Being Different" for the book Growing Up with O.I. published by the Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation.

Click below to read Suzanne's full Bio on USICD's website:  http://www.usicd.org/template/person.cfm?person_id=23

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