The aim of the project is to raise the public awareness on challenges of women with disabilities (WWD) and the need for inclusive services by capacity building of Women with disabilities on public journalism and blogging. We are going to involve young WWD from different communities of Armenia and to train them on topics related to citizen journalism and blogging. After they will become correspondents for the first Armenian blog for WWD and will speak up about their rights and needs to be included in community life.
Topical focus:
Country:
What locality or neighborhood will your project focus on?
Yerevan, Gyumri, Dilijan, Ijevan, Armavir, Artashat
Describe the specific population with whom you will be working.
Young WWD and mothers of children with disabilities will be involved in development of this proposal. They will manage the project and actively participate in the implementation of activities. 8 of them will be trained as a core group, and then they will develop materials and conducting training for other women and parents in their own communities. From 2014 January 1st, the number of women with disabilities in the Republic of Armenia is 89.265. This group is especially vulnerable firstly for the gender, secondly for having disabilities. One of the biggest problems in Armenia for WWD is still the lack of society’s awareness about their rights and also traditional stereotypes which become barrier on the way to their full involvement into the society.
Who else will be on your team to help implement the project?
We will cooperate with the union of legal entities “National Disability Advocacy Coalition”, which includes 23 NGOs from 11 regions of Armenia who represent the interests of people with different problems. All the members of the Union are registered Disabled people's organizations (DPO). They are engaged in protection of rights, deal with fundamental problems of people with movement, mental, hearing or sight disabilities, issues of disabled women and kids. The mission of the Union is to reach social inclusion of people with disabilities in the RA and to contribute to the protection of the rights of people with disabilities in the RA.
Facbook page: https://www.facebook.com/disabilitycoalition?ref=hl
The website: http://disabilitycoalition.am/en
What kinds of news, stories and other content will be created?
Correspondents will cover women's issues on the social model of disability, inclusive services and accessibility issues. They will also prepare photo stories about community life and success stories about women with disabilities. Citizen journalist will write articles on Women's Rights, Women's Health, Sexual and Reproductive Health and other topics.
What technologies and digital tools do you plan to use in the trainings?
Describe the connections that you or your organization have already established or plan to establish that will contribute to the success of the project.
We will cooperate with the union of legal entities “National Disability Advocacy Coalition”, which includes 23 NGOs from 11 regions of Armenia who represent the interests of people with different problems.
Since the group realizing the project actively cooperates with the “National Disability Advocacy Coalition”, we’ll develop skills of women-members of those organizations about citizen journalism. Training will be organized for core group, which will train the other young girls and mothers on the same topics in their own communities and will share their knowledge with other women. Articles published by them will be also placed in the web site www.disabilityinfo.am
How many participants do you think will be trained in your project?
Training will be organized first for the core group, which will include the most active 10-12 young women and parents from different organizations and communities. The group will take part in training in the capital city. Travel costs for participants from the regions will be reimbursed which will give them an opportunity to take part in the training actively. Then our trainers who will be also women with disabilities, will help that group to conduct such training themselves in other communities and regions, as a result of which we intend to organize meetings with more than 60 people.
Describe which technologies, tools, and media you will focus on when training participants.
Persons with disabilities don't have the same opportunity as people without disabilities for access to the information. In this case internet blogs, websites and online resources can be a new opportunity for women with disabilities, who have accesses to the internet but have no appropriate skills and enough courage to speak up about themselves via networks. We will teach how to make photos using technical means having not so good technical opportunities, how to edit them and how to represent it to the auditorium as internet content. One of the most important skills that we’ll teach, is how to write own success story, how to represent and share own experience.
Describe the facilities where you will hold the workshops.
Workshops will take place in Yerevan, Armenia at the Union of Legal Entities “National Disability Advocacy Coalition”. The office is in the center of Yerevan. One room and 2 computers will be provided for the training. The office has, printer and scanner, TV set, DVD player, telephone and FAX. The connection speed of the internet (ADSL) is 4096 kbps. computers are connected to network.The place for the training in the regions will be provided by member organizations of the Coalition and by local organizations.
What is your current relationship with the community with whom you plan to work? What makes you the most appropriate individual or organization to implement this project?
As a Woman with a disability I have been engaged in advocating the rights of people with disabilities for 15 years and I am a member of the community I plan to work with. I graduated from Yerevan State University, Department of Journalism. I am the author of “Disability issue and Mass Media” manual for journalists. As a woman with disability I have been trained on issues of women’s rights and leadership in USA and Armenia. Now I am working with group of young women and disabled people's organizations, initiate www.disabilityinfo.am and www.ikin.am websites which serve as resource for both women with disabilities and journalists.
What specific challenges do you expect to face when planning and implementing your project?
The young women with disabilities may not be motivated to actively participate in the program or probably don't cooperate with the other community members. Most of them are still need to overcome their psychological barriers and fears.
We will manage that risk by being a role model for girls and women with disabilities. We also will involve active young journalists with disabilities and other girls who are strong individuals and who can help the others on peer groups. On the other hand we will work with participants to develop their capacities on advocacy and leadership.
How will you measure and evaluate the project’s impact, specifically: your primary participants, the wider regional community, or the global digital community?
Participants will became more active in their regional and digital community by sharing their photos and articles. On website www.ikin.am will increase the number of posts by women with disabilities and parents of children, who will be trained during the project. Most of the women will be well known as an active reporters and available and interesting sources of information. They also will closely cooperate with the other media representatives and some of them will create their own personal blogs.
If your project were to be selected as a Rising Voices grantee, what would be the general timeline of project activities in 2014?
The project will start on Jun 1 of 2014. From June to August training for core group will be organized. The training course will include the following topics: “The journalism main genres”, “How to write success stories”, “What is the citizen journalism”, “Blogging”, “How to prepare good photo stories”, “How to use the social media for advocacy”. On August the training of trainers will be conducted on trainers’ capacity building. In that period training materials and handouts will be prepared for participants. From September 1 to the November 30 the core group of trainers will organize first phase of new training for women with disabilities and parents in 6 communities. That part will refer to content development.
Detail a specific budget of up to $2,500 USD for operating costs.
The budget includes the salary of the project coordinator for 12 months, honorarium for the trainers conducting the training and the mentoring. Payments for the trainers will be done according to the number of training. As the training will be conducted in different regions and communities the budget includes also travel expenses.
We will spend the Money for training materials and coffee brakes also. As we plan to organize training in different communities and in different office, we will ensure the technical problems with buying a net book for presentations.
Besides the microgrant funding, what other support can Rising Voices provide for your project to ensure its success?
May be Rising Voices can provide some training materials on storytelling, journalism and other relevant topics.
Contact name
Zaruhi Batoyan
