Today, Tbilisi City Hall was considering the appeal of Koba Nadiradze. Koba Nadiradze is a person with disability. His complaint concerns the fine imposed in 2009. The plaintiff was not able to attend the trial as it was held on the sixth floor and it was too complicated for him to get there.
There were other wheelchair users willing to attend the trial, but they were unable to get to the sixth floor as well.
Due to submission the documentation completely, the trial was postponed until the 24th of January.
On the July 6th, 2012, our organization with students from Tbilisi State University won the contest under the name “Students in Support to Social Enterprise”. The contest was organized by Eurasia Partnership foundation, The Center for Strategic Research and Development of Georgia and British Council.
Our organization with the students from Tbilisi State University developed the business plan which means to establish a social enterprise that will produce the Georgian spice salt Zeskho, and where the people with disabilities will be employed. The income of the social enterprise will be used to help the social integration of people with disabilities. The project will be financed by Eurasia Partnership Foundation.
Social enterprise works with the business principle that has a social mission. It is the organization which uses the innovative business approach to solve the public issues. Social enterprise doesn’t works to increase the income for owners and accomplices, as it happens in business; it reinvests the income into the community or business for achieving its goals.
Considering the conditions of disabled people in Georgia today, when their rights are violated and are not realized, when the environment is almost fully inaccessible, when their integration remains as an issue, one of the biggest problem is their employment. Establishing the social enterprise aimed on their employment and realization of their interests is the step forward.
Students’ involvement in this project has a special importance; this has the double advantage for people with disabilities as well as for students and is the additional support in social integration of people with disabilities.
Organization Accessible Environ-ment For Everyone, with the support of UNICEF and the Ministry of Sport
and Youth Affairs, has implemented the project "Accessible Youth
Services". To
create a healthy society and develop the democracy values, respecting, meeting
the rights of persons with disability, their equality, allowing them to engage
in social life actively are of great importance. As the physical environment is
not adapted to their needs, majority of people with disability can’t move
around the public places. This is a huge problem not only for the wheelchair
users. Being locked in their houses makes them less visible. Process of precise
identification of the problems, people with disability have to cope, becomes a major challenge.
In 2011 the
Ministry of sport and youth affairs of Georgia, with the support of UNICEF,
created an online database of youth services “E-Services”.
This database is still growing and contains huge amount of
interesting and useful informationfor
the
youth. But the accessibility
of these services for the youth with disability remained unclear, because
there were no means for the interested person to browse services by their
accessibility.Besides, service providers were unable to provide clear information as well, because they had no knowledge and information
about the accessibility standards. Usually lack of information is a bigger problem
than the lack of funding for adaptation.
Organizing
the free time is especially acute problem among the young
people with disability, because of the inaccessibility of the entertainment
and holiday activities for wheelchair users. Meanwhile leaving the
houses and contacting with the society is the main point for psychological rehabilitation
of people with disability. The accessibility of services providedvia “E-Services” will be a crucial step towards the
integration of young people with disability into the society and realization of
their rights.
Taking this situation into account, the project
“Accessible Youth Services” was worked out. Project was supported by UNICEF and
the Ministry of Sport and Youth Affairs.
All service providers and service providing locations given in a database were checked up within the project. Among
95 service providers across the country, providing 405 services, there are only
8 of them that are accessible to wheelchair users. More detailed monitoring results and the information about accessible services you can get from the video below:
The situation is not good enough, but 30
service providers were defined as simply adaptable. These cases are absolutely
possible to make accessible with minimum costs and effort, that will allow everyone to use their services. Memorandum
of understanding between the NGO Movement Accessible Environment for Everyone
and LEPL Children and Youth National Center was signed within the project.
Memorandum expresses the collaboration between above mentioned parties to
consider and respect the rights of persons with disability in the online
database of youth services. An accessibility
component was added to the data base and all the accessible services were
marked as accessible to wheelchair users. On December 24 Movement
Accessible Environment for Everyone and Children and Youth National Center held
the joint final presentation. To display the different youth services and
visualize the new portal’s virtual space, showroom was arranged. Guests had an
opportunity to engage in various competitive activities going on in the
showroom sections of basketball, dancing, painting, photography, literature
etc. During the second part of the presentation winners, including young
persons with disability, were awarded.
We had
to overcome certain complications while implementing the project. These are
general complications that the persons with disability, their relatives and
organizations working on these issues have to cope in everyday life: low level
of public awareness, stereotypes, nihilistic and even negative attitudes
towards the persons with disability and their abilities, low level of
informedness with regard to their needs. Overcoming these complications is a long-term process and still requires much work to do. Implementing the project “Accessible Youth
Services” and support from UNICEF was of great importance in the way to achieve
this goal.
The
organisations mission is to provide assistance and advocacy for the rights of
people with disabilities and to ensure equal access to all public services
enjoyed by other members of society.
To advocate for the rights of people with disability, the organisation
works on several strategic directions as follows:
Activation and Engagement - situation
analysis reveals that neither government nor society at large realizes the
scale of the problem. Due to the inaccessibility of the physical and social environment,
people with disability are routinely denied the opportunity to be involved in
the rhythm of daily life as equal members of society. The fact that disabled
people do not have a profile within society gives rise to the false assumption
that they have no aspirations in this direction. Nothing could be further from
the truth. This misapprehension in turn leads to a passive attitude on behalf
of the government towards people with disability, and accounts for the current
poor quality of services for disabled people. Accordingly, our organisation
assigns priority to making people with disability more active and enabling them
to engage in various educational, sport and leisure activities.
Public Awareness Raising - The most
powerful instrument in existence today in providing information is the use of
media. Over time, along with TV, radio and print media, social media has also
gained great significance. ERTAD is actively working to create a Georgian web
resource. An additional aim is to make documentary movies and video
tutorials.It is very important to
provide each person with disability, as well as the rest of society with
information not only about the nature of existing problems, but also about
their solutions.
Collaboration for Change - this strand of the organisations
strategy is to establish constructive partnerships with both governmental, nongovernmental
and donor organisations. As an organisation, Accessible Environment for
Everyone, does not simply forward general demands on issues which are central
to the lives of disabled people. Our response is to create detailed, realistic
and solution orientated project proposals. Experience has taught us that a positive
constructive and businesslike approach is much more effective than focussing
our approach on the shortcomings of our lives.
