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>>BECKY: I have a simple question about the percentage of people in Bangladesh
that can read Braille. \ >>DARREN: You mean the percentage in Cambodia.\
>>BECKY: Cambodia.\ >>DARREN: Is that right?\
>>BECKY: Yeah.\ >>DARREN: This is \now I can explain my comment
I made about in the Bangladesh presentation, because the statistics all the statistics
I have seen in Cambodia about that deal with disability, I don't trust any of them. \
So if someone said, you know, here's from MOLSOLVY 17 percent of those who
are visually impaired, I would say: How did you collect that information? \
In speaking with people at Krousar Thmey, according to them, unless you are actually
in a school like that, it's zero percent. There's just absolutely no outreach in the
way there was, for instance, with prosthetic limbs with people going out into areas that
they knew were heavily mined with land mines or areas where you still have a lot of unexploded
ordinance and remnants from even the Vietnam war that still kill people. \
In terms of who reads Braille, you have to find\ you have to be at a school, an institution
like K S A R T A M Y where they have facilities to teach it and you can learn it there. Their
education program is actually very high end. \
In fact, it's often better than some of the other schools around the area so if you are
there, in terms of developing Khmer sign language in terms of learning braille
its 100% if your at the school
The school does not charge. \ The school is run again by outside funding.
\ So to be honest, I wouldn't know\ if the
question is what percentage of persons who are visually impaired and could benefit from
access to the Braille software or even from learning Braille, versus those what that actually
have access to it, I don't know. \ I have not seen any statistics that were collected
in Cambodia that I would trust even a little bit. \
So, I don't know. \ I can say in a generalization that it is a
woefully low percentage of those who could benefit from all this kind of assistive technology
or just learning Braille versus those who actually get to learn it, it's woefully low,
a long way to go in Cambodia. \ Any last questions? \
There is one. \ \
>>AUDIENCE: Peter from the UW rehab. \ Interested in your perspective to follow up
on the ***/AIDS and even our own department of global health here at the University of
Washington is very centered on infectious disease, ***/AIDS, working on malaria, clean
drinking water, diarrheal diseases, things that are just killing thousands and thousands
of people around the world. \ So how do we compete in a lowresource environment
around the world to get disability really at the top of people's list and not second
after all these other issues that are going on in global health.\
>>DARREN: It might have turned off. Yeah, this is a question not only in relationship
to what Joyojeet brought up about ***/AIDS versus disability. \
Part of it is time frame. \ Many people, you see it on paper. \
There's cure, no cure. \ Do you have one yet? \
Let's work for it. \ With things like assistive technology and
cognitive and physical disabilities, this is a generational process. Will this educational
program work? And, you know, I'm sure you know this very well. \
In the world of funding and in the world of science, things that take a generation easily
get pushed to a back burner for something that's, you know: Did we get this result?
\ In Cambodia, for instance, the autism campaign
set up by Hagar International and the World Autism Network just starting January 2010,
this is totally uncharted territory. \ In the context of Cambodia for instance if
you're dealing with cognitive disabilities, even the vocabulary is not there except for
usually foreign trained a very small community of doctors. \
***/AIDS, everyone in Cambodia knows. There's campaigns everywhere. \
You say ***/AIDS in Khmer and, you know, I got it. There are posters everywhere. \
But, for instance, there's no distinction yet in common parlance in Cambodia between
things like autism, there's just nothing regarding things like, you know, ADHD. There's no vocabulary.
\ It's all just "those people are different."
And that's all you've got. And so what you've got here is ***/AIDS is for better or worse
it's tangible. Here's this disease. It's an infectious disease and it can kill you. \
All these other things, even given this context, this context in which you have a cultural
environment that tends to lump everything together into, you know, horrible words, "useless,"
these kinds of things, you're battling with not just: Do we have the funding to introduce
assistive technology? You're battling with an environment in which people are saying:
What's the point? \ Nobody is saying "what's the point" with ***/AIDS.
\ People are saying: Wow, it can kill me. Let's
do something with that. \ I don't want to use the word cultural engineering,
because it sounds a little fascist, but you are talking about really reengineering a mindset,
and even in the three cities, Siem Reap, Phnom Penh, and Battambang, it's enough of a challenge.
In rural areas it's a generation away before people are going to be willing to say: "Oh,
now I get what disability means. I always thought it was just because Bpikaar \
***/AIDS doesn't have to suffer from that. It's a very easy thing to comprehend and therefore
it's easy to do a public relations campaign. It's easy to say: Was that campaign effective?
\ I mean, this is a country I mean, going back
to my first comment in which there are still people who are convinced that the genocide\
the genocide took place between 1975 and 1979. You can go to villages where over half the
people will not believe it ever happened. \
So, lack of information. \ So, anything beyond here's ***/AIDS, it's
deadly, beware. It's tough. So, it's a longterm commitment and it takes NGOs and government
workers. \ There's one person in parliament, mu sochua\
there's one person in parliament who is the champion of human rights and disability rights
in Cambodia. That's one person. She's kind of the public faith and that's it. \
So, anyway, we can talk more, I'm sure. \
>>BECKY: I wanted to follow up on that. \
Because there's been some groups that I've been talking with in DC that do have the largest
funding streams either ***/AIDS or infectious disease from USAID and USAID is spending a
lot of energy trying to mainstream disability into their existing programming. \
And so and that's both in how they put out their RFPs and how they\ the criteria they
use to evaluate the proposals. \ And so that's another approach that NGOs are
looking at, is really trying to adapt their existing programming so that it is inclusive.
Of course, that's, you know, sometimes worse case scenario, that just means changing how
you are reporting, so you add disability category and best case scenario it's very comprehensive
in looking how to include people with disabilities, the technology aspects, information in multiple
formats for health campaigns, that type of thing. \
Thank you very much. \ >>DARREN: Thank you for your time. \
(APPLAUSE.) \