Plateau Deaf Women Association (PDWA) has hold an inception meeting and community mobilization with key stakeholders with the aim of creating awareness on “The Rights Way” project.
This was disclosed during a one day inception meeting organised by PDWA under the supervision of Development Exchange Center (DEC), Supported by Bread for World Protestant Development Service (Brot). held at COWAN office, Sabon-Barki Jos, recently.
Speaking during the event, Project Officer, Mrs. Patricia Joshua Gyang disclosed that the thematic sector of the project include: education which focuses on adolescent girls with deafness and economic empowerment which also focuses on vocational/skills acquisition for 20 women with deafness. She added that the locations of proposed projects are Jos North and Bassa Local Government Areas (LGAS) of Plateau State,
Gyang who doubles as chairperson, Plateau Deaf Women Association (PDWA) stated that a lot of women with deafness have no means of survival, such condition has posed serious problems to the deaf women. She stressed that deaf women depend either on their older parents or husbands at all times which places them under untold hardships and domestic violence.
Gyang maintained that giving the deaf women vocational skills and some business tools would make them to become independent.
The project officer further explained that the strategies/activities of the project include; training of secondary school girls with disabilities on adolescent reproductive rights, skills training for deaf women, community sensitization rally, training of adolescents girls with deafness and peer educators and distribution of startup kits.
She remarked that some of the issues on sexual violence against deaf women to be addressed by the project are the high incidence of deaf girls contracting HIV/AIDS, adding that deaf girls are more vulnerable to contacting the disease due to lack of adequate information on reproductive health and rights among others.
Also speaking, M&E, Jenebu Anyebe, said that the project overall goal is to reduce incidence of sexual violence against girls with Deafness in primary and secondary schools and also to increase income in families that have deaf girls by empowering their women.
Anyebe explained that with the execution of two programme activities and the outcomes of the outputs so far in the first quarter assessment, the Rights Way project is moving steadily towards meeting its stated goals and objectives 2023.
INN reports that the inception meeting also featured the presentation of an overview of PDWA by Charity James among others.
INN also reports that the next programme of activities for the project is billed for October 12th to 14th, 2023 for the training of deaf-girls at Plateau School for the Deaf.