People with Disabilities, Food Insecurity, and COVID-19: Part One
Disability Inclusion Matters More than Ever
By Leia Isanhart, Angela Kohama, and Madeline Sahagun
This blog is the first in a two-part series. Read part two to learn more about the importance of partnerships, and how food security programming in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to build more inclusive, accessible communities.
According to WHO, at least 15% of the global population lives with a disability, and approximately 80% of people with disabilities live in low- and middle-income countries. People with disabilities disproportionately live in poverty across the globe due to their widespread exclusion from the labor market — in some countries up to 80% of people with disabilities are excluded from the workforce. This systematic exclusion, combined with the “hidden costs of disability,” mean that people with disabilities are more likely to be food insecure.
This is certainly the case in Madagascar, where more than 1 million people are experiencing food insecurity brought on by a multitude of factors, ranging from several years of locust invasions to climate-related drought and now COVID-19. Currently, southern Madagascar is experiencing a famine. People with disabilities are often excluded from response efforts to these crises despite being disproportionately affected by food insecurity. For this reason, Maharo — a USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA)-funded resilience food security activity (RFSA) operating in the south and southwest of Madagascar — has emphasized disability inclusion as a priority, facilitated largely by the partnership between Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and Humanity & Inclusion (HI). The activity aims to reach more than 55,880 households and 279,398 people — including 5,500 people with disabilities — to reduce acute food insecurity in the regions of Atsimo Andrefana and Androy.
The criteria for participants in BHA-funded RFSAs vary from country to country, but most activities target pregnant and lactating women, children under 2, and youth. Although people with disabilities are disproportionately affected by food insecurity and malnutrition, they are often overlooked or deprioritized in the design and implementation of complex food security programs. The partnership between CRS and HI in Madagascar attempts to fill this gap, leveraging HI’s disability inclusion expertise to build capacity and change attitudes across activity staff and communities. Daniel Rooney, Chief of Party for the Maharo RFSA, shared that,
“[Maharo] takes pride in its mandate of ‘working with most vulnerable populations’ and we feel that persons with disabilities were among the most vulnerable populations in the communities that we serve.”
Many activities may consider disability inclusion as “one more thing” that renders an already complex multi-sectoral food security program more challenging. There are also false perceptions that inclusion is expensive or should be done exclusively by disability-focused organizations, not mainstream NGOs. With high standards for inclusion, organizations feel overwhelmed and unsure where to begin. However, as Vero Ramananjohany, Gender, Youth and Social Dynamic Advisor at CRS Madagascar points out, people with disabilities “are also victims of drought and global warming, and we have [to work] to reduce inequalities on the ground and dispel bias and stigma within the community about the rights of persons with disabilities.”
Disability inclusion is not a tick-box exercise, but a long-term process that requires commitment at all levels — individual, organizational, and community. In Madagascar, CRS and HI are finding creative ways to meet their goals despite facing interruptions caused by COVID-19. Based on conversations with Maharo staff, here a short list of suggested tips for beginning the process of incorporating disability-inclusive practices:
Inclusion should be a component in the project cycle, with the meaningful participation of people with disabilities and representative organizations. All activity materials and interventions must be reviewed through a disability lens. For instance, Maharo developed tip sheets to provide practical advice on inclusive practices to activity staff in their respective technical areas.
Assess disability inclusion at both the project and organizational levels. Maharo staff recommend that activities conduct a context assessment to understand how disability is represented and assimilated. This might include an inclusiveness diagnosis of the implementing partners. The findings from such assessment can be used to prioritize interventions.
Following the inclusion assessment, adapt the activity’s theory of change (TOC) to incorporate assessment learnings. Maharo’s TOC was already promoting the participation and contributions of people with disabilities at all levels (Goal, Purpose, Sub-Purpose, Outcome, Outputs, Inputs). The activity adapted its TOC and indicators to account for disaggregation, which helped to justify and promote disability inclusion at the project level — Maharo aimed to target at least two percent of all people with disabilities (as identified during a recent census).
Collect and use disability-disaggregated data. The Maharo team collected data across all 445 villages in the activity. One important modification to the baseline survey included collecting disability-disaggregated data at the household level using a short set of questions created by the Washington Group. This allowed the activity to identify people with functional difficulties.
Maharo adjusted its inclusion approach and targeting process for each purpose [in the TOC] according to the different classifications of functional disabilities that were identified among the participants. One key intervention of collecting disaggregated data included monitoring the level of participation of people with disabilities in governance, to demonstrate that they have rights and access to the spheres of representation and decision-making at all levels, including community structures such as Village Development Committees and at the district level.
Incorporate a strong knowledge management system to capture ongoing lessons learned on the process and outcomes. Maharo prioritized the need for a knowledge management system to ensure that the team was constantly learning from processes, interventions, and outcomes.
We hope that these high-level considerations for disability inclusion can provide a foundation to kick off other activities’ inclusion journey. To learn more about global best practices for incorporating disability inclusion across the project cycle, visit USAID’s Learning Lab on Inclusive Development. We also recommend identifying disability-specialized organizations or individuals affiliated with organizations of people with disabilities who can provide the contextual expertise needed to identify and remove barriers to inclusion in your area.
The recommendations above are entirely rooted in the experience and learnings of the CRS and HI country teams as they grappled with providing quality support to food insecure people with disabilities during COVID-19. The following staff members participated in the learning discussions and providing the data that inspired this blog:
- Vero Ramananjohany, Gender, Youth and Social Dynamics Advisor at CRS Madagascar
- Malala Ramarohetra, Communications Specialist at CRS Madagascar
- Alexis Rukezamiheto, Inclusion Technical Advisor at HI
- Daniel Rakotoarison, Inclusion Project Manager at HI
This blog is the first in a two-part series. Read part two to learn more about the importance of partnerships, and how food security programming in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to build more inclusive, accessible communities.
