NAGA CITY, April 24 (PIA) --- This city government, known as a model implementer of disability legislations, came up with another significant move to empower its physically-challenged constituents by spearheading a Speaker’s Bureau and Leadership training, topping among others, the Persons with Disability (PWD) sector.
Dubbed “Disability Rights Advocates Enrichment Workshop”, the 3-day confab which started yesterday and will end April 25, Saturday, aims to create a more pro-active and productive Bicolano PWD, towards a barrier-free society.
Persons with Disability Affairs Office (PDAO) Officer-in-Charge Christopher Molin said that there’s no opportune time to start empowering the PWDs but today, citing that there had been concrete moves in the past, in support of their cause. Molin added that they are proud of the gains that their sector has reaped and will use this for others to emulate.
“The very objective of the training-workshop is to teach the PWDs of their rights and for them to learn public speaking, so that they themselves can become good Resource Persons. What they will learn in the training-workshop, they can apply it in their community if in case there will be activities that needs Resource Persons or Speakers on the disabilities’ rights, then they can re-echo what they learned from the workshop.”
Partakers were given an opening lecture on disability issues awareness: making case for effective advocacy delivered by no less than the Founder of Project WIRED, Professor Rex A. Bernardo. WIRED – which means Work Innovation through Resource Enabled Development is an award-winning project advocating disability-inclusive approaches in work setting.
Bernardo, aside from being its founder, also serves as a Consultant of the Local Government Unit of Daet and a Board-member of Alyansa ng may Kapansanang Pinoy or Akap-Pinoy. The organization serves as the voice of persons with disabilities in promoting a rights-based, barrier-free and inclusive society.
Prof. Rene Gumba, Executive Director of the Jesse M. Robedro (JMR) Center for Good Governance also shared the relevance of Tsinelas leadership to PWDs. The said brand of leadership was attributed to a simple man’s governance epitomized by the late DILG Secretary Jesse Robredo.
Prof. Janice S. Cambri, M.A. also discussed Psychosocial Disability Awareness and Sensitivity to the participants. Cambri is the Founder of Transforming Communities for Inclusion of Persons with Psychosocial Disabilities-Philippines (TCI-Phil.) HELP Learning Center Foundation, Inc. Program Officer Jose Antonio Delos Reyes capped the day’s discussion on his lecture on the Advocacy and Organizing for delivery of Rights of PWDs: the Cararayan experience.
The remaining couple of days will be spent on lectures concerning the art of public speaking, discussion on special laws for persons with disability, regional implementation of PWD Rights, actual auditing if building establishments requiring strict compliance of BP 344 or identified establishments and the discussion on CY-2015 National Disability Prevention and Rehabilitation, among others.
AKO Bicol Party-list Representative Rodel M. Batocabe is also expected to grace the confab, tomorrow on its last day to talk on the Region-wide dialogue on legislation. (LSMacatangay, PIAV/Camarines Sur)