Seher Awareness Link Team
(April 2019- ongoing)
When designing and implementing the scaling up of Seher, from 1 nodal center to 5 in Pune city, a new idea opened up. A very strong sentiment was expressed by the Seher grassroots team, that, Seher services should spread through all of Pune city! While this aspiration is visionary, however, a “fiefdom” of Seher and Bapu Trust may become entrenched by such scaling, other than depletion of quality in the services provided and broader sustainability issues. Considering these, the “SALT” program was proposed and adopted, as a link program in the process of scaling up.
Another idea behind SALT is that, as Seher is about 15 years old, the process and protocols have become rigid and technocratic. While being acutely person centric and peer support oriented, Seher is still a program quite focussed on “identification” and “assessment”. SALT is trying to refresh community development designs in disability inclusive development, by thinking afresh, how far we can go with communities on the subject of inclusion, without having a design that is closely focussed on service delivery.
For example, can we focus on Article 8 of the CRPD (Awareness raising), and see how far, how deep and how widespread such an effort can be; and to see further, whether such a broad based effort can transform communities towards inclusion of persons with disabilities?
The SALT program is being implemented from April 2019 onwards. SALT team is working in additional 10 bastis, with a service tie up for persons with high needs, where necessary, with the nearest nodal center.
Vision
- Transforming community perception on wellbeing
- Preparing communities on the theme for support towards inclusion
Objectives of SALT program
- Transforming communities through awareness on wellness, peer support and self care
- Orientation on inclusion, promotion and prevention of psychosocial stress
- It is satellite link program of Seher, connecting communities together on wellbeing and inclusion.
Strategies
- Carry on with sheer awareness activities, including elements of support in situ (i.e. wherever awareness event is happening)
- To be comprehensive and inclusive of all stakeholders and existing groups, with new strategies for example, galli charcha (“lane debate”) and animating new spaces for example varta phalak (where communities gather for politics, news, debates, etc.)
- Seeing all community process as a support process for persons with mental health issues and psychosocial disabilities
- Focus on the Article 8 of UNCRPD and see how far and how deep we can go with awareness raising on disability inclusion and wellbeing.
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SALT lead team
Eknath Thongire
Ratna Byagary
Contact at camhpune@gmail.com
