Centers for Independent Living (CILs) are an essential element of the independent living movement. They are community-based, cross-disability, non-profit organizations that are designed and operated by disabled people. They provide essential services for disabled people to live independently in their communities, while ensuring choice and control of the users over the services.
In many places across the world, there is an insufficient number of CILs, and those that are present remain underfunded and lack capacity to respond to the needs of the users. Development aid has not yet been sufficiently explored as a tool to further develop these centers in low and middle-income countries, despite their potential. This is partially caused by a lack of awareness of development actors about the positive impact of CILs.
In this context, our event will highlight existing initiatives to finance CILs in low and middle-income countries. It will aim to raise awareness among development actors of the benefits of CILs as an investment, and to push for further action to build CILs in a variety of regions and contexts.
The event will be organized as a webinar and will gather experts on the topic, along with donors that are currently funding CILs, representatives of CILs across the world, including in low and middle-income countries, and disabled users of the services. It will have live captioning in English, Spanish and Japanese, and international sign interpretation.
The webinar will be held on 11 June, at 10:00-11:15 AM (New York time).
Register to the webinar by clicking here.
The event will be moderated by ENIL co-chair Nadia Hadad. A speaker will deliver a short testimony sharing their experience of accessing CIL services in a low/middle-income country, and highlighting the unique challenges that CILs face in such circumstances. Stefan Trömel, Senior Disability Specialist at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) will discuss the role of CILs in supporting social services, quality employment, and advancing the UN Agenda 2030.
Shariq ur Rehamn from Milestone in Pakistan and Wendy Barrantes from Centro de Vida Independiente Morpho in Costa Rica will present on the history, the services offered, and the challenges of CILs in Asia and Latin America. Mr. Shigeto Itani, Vice-Chair of the Japanese Council on Independent Living Centers (JIL) will share insights from a project supporting CILs in low and middle-income countries. Ms. Eriko Kobayashi from the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) will discuss donor support for CILs, the benefits of development aid funding, and recommendations from other donors. The event will conclude with a Q&A.