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Seeing the light
by Joseph Lopez – Challenge Weekly
 AFTER spending much of his life helping to improve the eyesight of people Dr Allen Foster realised one day that he was not seeing the other side of the disability. The president of Christian Blind Mission (cbm), who was visiting New Zealand for the first time this month, said it took 10 years of working as an ophthalmologist in Africa before he became aware that disability evoked societal prejudice. “Personally, I was not aware of it and this is true for cbm,” said Dr Foster. There were two incidents that led to Dr Foster and cbm adopting a new paradigm in regards to disability.On a personal level, Dr Foster’s brother-in-law was physically and intellectually impaired because of cerebral palsy. Although Dr Foster had interacted with his wife’s brother for 30 years, it was not until five years ago when his brother-in-law was hospitalised for six months, that he got to spend more time with him. When his brother-in-law died, Dr Foster said he realised what he had lost. “I began to understand what it was like for him to live with a disability. But I also understood him from my side, what he brought to my life, and what I missed when he was not there,” he recalls. “It was more than just the brother kind of relationship. For him with his intellectual impairment, in some ways, he had a better understanding of the important things in life, than what maybe I had with all my intellectual knowledge. We get so wrapped up in a lot of the intellectual stuff, we miss the deeper meanings in life.” cbm held some in-depth conversations with people with disabilities and Dr Foster and the ministry became more aware of the need to help the community accept responsibility for meeting the needs not just of “normal” people but also those with disabilities. This led the organisation to shift from a charity service approach to a human rights ministry advocating for all people with disabilities. The Mission is now no longer just a ministry for people with visual impairment but for all disabilities including hearing, physical, mental, and intellectual. cbm New Zealand is one of nine member countries supporting numerous projects in some of the poorest countries in the world. Dr Allen said what made cbm unique as an international Christian development organisation was being not just a service organisation providing medical help but also working with its country-based partners to provide a comprehensive Community-Based Rehabilitation programme. He said disability was not just a physical or mental impairment but could induce her individuals or the community. “We have to minimise the impairment but we also need to change the environment and society and lessen barriers towards people with disabilities. The two go hand in hand. It is more than just health.  “cbm does not stop at health services. We look at education. Does the child with disability have access to schools? Are the teachers trained? Are there adequate facilities? Will the child when he or she grows up have the abilities to have a livelihood, enabling them to be economically secure? There has to be acceptance by society, having a say and a choice within the village just like everybody else.” Dr Foster said, however, that this did not mean cbm could do everything. “There might be other organisations or NGOs that can do the work better and cbm can network with these groups,” he explained. cbm recently saw itself as an advocate in the Gaza conflict where there was considerable loss of life and infrastructure. “When relief comes in, are people with disabilities included? Are they mainstreamed into emergency relief response? Often relief agencies only think of normal people but the most vulnerable are people with a disability, which is 10 percent of population. What does this relief mean to a deaf child, a person in wheelchair?,” Dr Foster said. Dr Foster said another thing he realised was that change had to come from within the organisation and that cbm also had to be inclusive of people with disabilities. “But we are not very good at that yet,” he admits. The best way to think of inclusion he said was to define the word exclusion. “Exclusion can be on the basis of nationality, faith, gender, and age, just to name a few. The role for cbm was to follow the teachings of Jesus who was inclusive.” Dr Foster said as leader of cbm he intends to address two barriers in the ministry. The first was the lack of people with disabilities in senior decision-making. “We have a lot of persons with a disability working for cbm but not many at the senior decision-level management level. “Second, we want to be a truly international Christian development and disability organisation. We work in many countries but I am not sure we have equal opportunities for people from all nationalities to work with us. Rather we tend to be Anglo-Saxon Protestant in our funding country offices.” Dr Foster said Jesus indicated that the path of his ministry and teaching was particularly to people with disabilities and the poor. “Jesus had a particular heart for the poorest in society. But people with disabilities are the poorest of the poor, not just in financial terms but in their quality of life. They have little voice. I would like to ask Christian New Zealanders to reflect on this word ‘inclusion.’ Jesus was inclusive. We need to ask Jesus to break down our barriers, so that we will be salt in the world.” To download the original version click here. |
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