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NASCOH holds information training workshop for people with disabilities
National Association of Societies for the Care of the Handicapped (NASCOH)
Extracted from Disability Update, Nov 24-Dec 1, 2006
November 24, 2006

In a bid to promote access to information as the disability world gears up to the International Day of the Disabled which will run under the theme 'E-accessibility' on December 3, the National Association of Societies for the Care Of the Handicapped (NASCOH), recently handed over 6 sets of state-of-the-art portable radios to members of the disability movement who had just completed a two-day information workshop in Harare.

The radios were handed over by the Vice Chairperson of NASCOH, Mrs Elizabeth Matare, who urged the participants to be proactive and use the information gathering and dissemination tools that they had learnt to bring disability issues into the limelight and enhance ongoing efforts to promote and protect the rights of people with disabilities. Participants from the workshop were drawn from NASCOH's Regional Advocacy Committees from the provinces of Mashonaland East, Mashonaland West, Mashonaland Central, Manicaland, Midlands, Masvingo and Harare.

The participants, who included people with various disabilities, including the visually impaired, were equipped with information gathering and dissemination skills that would enable them to identify newsworthy events taking place in their various provinces, write and package these stories for onward transmission to the local media or to the NASCOH secretariat, and create mutually beneficial relations with media houses in their provinces.

The workshop, which is the first of its kind to be run by NASCOH, was also aimed at encouraging free flow of information, not only among the NASCOH membership, but also with the generality of the public. It was also aimed at building a core of information-conscious and information-rich disability activists who would spearhead information gathering and dissemination activities in the various provinces, and articulate disability issues with clarity and compassion.

In addition to using electricity, the radios that were distributed to participants are also battery powered and solar powered, thus ensuring uninterrupted access to news and information to users at all times and even in the remotest of locations. NASCOH plans on scaling up on these efforts by extending such services to people with disabilities around the country, in a bid to enhance access to information.

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