Health communication, HIV/AIDS, social mobilisation, learning evaluation, capacity building

Exchange lunchtime discussion
9 September 2004

"What we need is rights and justice. Disabled people are always excluded", said Shahidul Haque as he introduced his organisation’s advocacy work.

Shahidul and his colleague Mayeen Ahmed from Social Assistance and Rehabilitation for the Physically Vulnerable (SARPV), Bangladesh shared their experience of advocacy work with vulnerable people, particularly a recent art exhibition.

In December 2003 the Dhrupad gallery in Dhaka was transformed for SARPV’s participatory art exhibition Seeing in the Dark. A working group of 25 people with visual impairments and five people with physical disabilities planned the exhibition to communicate their experiences of life in Dhaka to non-disabled people.

Together with UK artist Simon Allen, the group plunged the gallery into darkness and recreated Dhaka life through sound and touch, including rickshaws, gardens, roadsides and shops. Recordings of personal stories were also included, among them the story of a disabled girl telling how her uncle had abused her. Abuse is not discussed openly in Bangladesh’s press, but local journalists reported on the subject after experiencing the exhibition.

Seeing in the Dark was part of Communicating for Advocacy, a project SARPV is involved in along with a network of other organisations in Bangladesh and a wider network in South Asia and South-East Asia. Healthlink Worldwide, a UK-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), initiated the project.

Seeing in the Dark was distinctive because there was a real change of power when blind people guided sighted people through the darkened rooms. Three or four people at a time were guided round the exhibition for about 30 minutes and SARVP managed to attract some influential visitors: architects who plan school buildings, policy makers, ex-ministers who still had good relations with the government, students, businessmen with links to government, and local radio and television. All the visitors got a slight but powerful experience of the exclusions a person with physical impairments encounters.

Discussion participants asked at what point does art become advocacy? Some were concerned about whether simulation can be patronising or harmful. One participant who had worked with VSO on the Seeing in the Dark project noted that the emphasis was really on the environment and how this is disabling, rather than on trying to simulate disability.

“Advocacy is not two or three days work, it takes a long time. It is only possible with a network, coalitions and by pooling energies and resources”, said Mayeen.

Shahidul and Mayeen stressed that networking was a way to make the most of resources and for organisations to gain credibility. There is a strengthened voice when organisations join together and stronger lobbying when groups use each other’s expertise and contacts. Mayeen noted the need for informal networks and relationships, as well as formal links, to make advocacy work better.

Change is a continuous process. But staff at SARPV often felt that what they want to happen does not happen: “We realised we need to take small steps and plan well. We need to put other people in our shoes…it is a long process, we need to carry on and be persistent,” said Mayeen.

When Shahidul was at university in Bangladesh in 1992 he found out about the UN Decade of Disabled Persons. As he uses crutches to get around, he wondered why none of his teachers had told him about it. He found out that government of Bangladesh had signed up to the initiative, but asked himself what this meant if no one in his prestigious university knew anything about it.

Shahidul referred to the need to change the perception that disabled people are invalid, which is widespread at both state and family level. When vulnerable and disabled people are included in initiatives their lives improve dramatically. He noted the massive increase in disabled children in schools after the offer of a government stipend.

Discussion participants raised some issues around the different types of communication for advocacy that can take place. One participant noted that there was a whole continuum of advocacy activities: “There are different models which are effective in different circumstances: In some ways it is about principles, and in other ways it is practical, about what works.”

Another participant noted that Seeing in the Dark was really effective in capturing the voice. Discussion participants were excited by the possibility of local level advocacy using these types of communication methods, for example with teachers – through teachers you reach students, then the students’ families, then the neighbours. This makes it a very sustainable way of doing advocacy.

Communicating for advocacy: lessons from a disabled people's organisation in Bangladesh