Making sure that everyone gets included

For the past ten years, Mission East has worked with local NGOs in Armenia to find children with disabilities who have been hidden away behind the doors of their homes. Having a disability is a taboo in Armenia, a taboo that can be destructive not only for the children but for entire families. The shame is especially a burden for the parents of girls with disabilities. Their parents have problems finding spouses for their daughters, as able-bodied girls with siblings with a disability are looked upon as carriers of a ‘disease’.
According to several NGOs, in the mid-90s there were around 10,000 children with disabilities in Armenia, with a majority of the children hidden away and getting no medical attention. The number of children that are hidden and get no attention is getting smaller and smaller as Mission East and our partners steadily work our way through Armenia, finding these children and ensuring they get medical care, rehabilitation and inclusion into the education system of the country.
The taboo around people with disabilities originates from the period of the Soviet Union when authorities moved people with disabilities and isolated them in institutions in the rural areas.
Without a system helping the children with a disability to get medical care and rehabilitation, to go to school and to get the support from the authorities that they need and rightfully deserve, their parents may easily experience the children being thrown backwards and forwards in a system that does not work. Addressing this problem has been a primary focus of Mission East since 2008: With the support of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we have carried out a project in the poor province of Tavush in Northern Armenia, through which all children with a disability are offered access to medical care, rehabilitation and education, where all relevant information on these children is shared between relevant government departments, where all professional staff involved are trained, and where the parents of these children are organized in groups where they discuss and help each other solving the problems of their children.
The project in Tavush finished three years ago, but the system works! Children in Tavush who have a disability are no longer hidden away or being thrown backwards and forwards in a system without transparency. On the contrary, everyone in the system now works together to ensure that the children actually get the help they need!
Mission East now wishes for this successful model to be rolled out in the entire country – first in the capital Yerevan where 40% of the population lives.
Mission East wants to go one step further – ensuring that all children with a disability in Armenia can get all the help they need.