To streamline social inclusion: CBCHS hones journalists’ skills on disability reporting.

This was during a training workshop organised through CBCHS’s Empowerment and Disability Inclusive Development, EDID Programme.
The workshop which held January 5 in Yaounde, was organised in partnership with the Ministry of Social Affairs.
The capacity building gathering was chaired on behalf of the CBCHS Director, Prof Tih Pius, and facilitated by the Socio Economic Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, SEEPD Programme Manager, Awa Jacque Chirac.
SEEPD Programme Manager underscored the key role the media has to play in causing behavioural change communication and giving visibility to the plight of Persons With Disabilities, PWDs, as well as efforts being made by the CBCHS and partners towards ensuring an inclusive society in Cameroon.
“We recognise the role that the press has in promoting behavioural change communication,” the CBCHS representative said. 
He continued that: “We recognise the role media has in sensitising and promoting uptake of service, so we are trusting that having organised this workshop and bringing to their attention the services CBCHS and partners have done in developing human resource training programmes in rehabilitation…”. 
He then charged the participants to take the commitment to go back and change the narratives around disability inclusion and to make it trend as part of the wider call for Rehabilitation Agenda 2030, intended to shift rehabilitation from the civil society to governments, launched in 2017 by the World Health Organisation, WHO.

The SEEPD Programme Director while recognising government’s collaboration through the Ministries of Public Health and of Social Affairs, said the CBCHS remains committed to be fully involved in the campaign for Rehabilitation Agenda 2030 and ensuring it meets with the realities on the ground. 
He stated that the CBCHS will continue in ensuring that those in need of rehabilitation services, have increased access to both well-trained providers and well-developed services.

MINAS official lauds CBCHS 
Present during the workshop, the Head of Communication Service at MINAS, Nathalie Dikoume, saluted the efforts of the CBCHS in promoting social inclusion in Cameroon.

“We laud CBCHS that is making ceaseless efforts in the fight for social inclusion. Community-based rehabilitation is being implemented in the community to promote equality in exchanges and especially the social inclusion of PWDs,” she said. 
She explained that the capacity building initiative seeks to make PWDs, families, PWDs associations, and the community to better understand what community rehabilitation is and to do this we need qualified persons.  
“It is also important to promote inclusive communication because one of the problems of PWDs is access to information and most times media communicate without taking into consideration of this class of people,” she told The Guardian Post, while highlighting the needs and specification of PWDs in the society.  
During the workshop, the impacts of the Rehabilitation Compass for Inclusion Project, under the supervision of MINAS was presented. 
The rehabilitation courses that are being piloted in Cameroon under the RCI project are said to be supported with funding from the Liliane Foundation and the AFAS Foundation. 
The participants were urged to be key stakeholders engaged in ensuring the sustainability of the courses in creating demand generation for people to be trained as Physiotherapists, Community-based Rehabilitation Workers, Multiskilled Rehabilitation Technicians, and Occupational Therapists.