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The Albanian Disability Rights Foundation begun as an operational Oxfam program(The Disability Unit in Tirana) in January 1994 and gradually developed and grew into a local registered independent NGO(foundation )in October 1996. This was reconfirmed again in 2002 according to the new law for NPOs(Non-for-profit organiozations) in Albania.
The Albanian Disability Rights Foundation, emerged as a response to the desperate need of a service which would take a rights based approach to disability issues, that's why ADRF has been campaigning , since its establishment for an improvement and implementation of disability legislation. The philosophy of ADRF is based upon the social model of disability and a human rights based approach.
ADRF has called for an improvement in the variety and quality of services available to disabled but improvement of public opinion and attitudes as an important preconditions to all the other development processes takes time and is still far from an accepted reality in Albanian society.
ADRF aimed at initially changing opinions and attitudes of disabled people themselves and assisting them either to organize themselves in Associations or to support the existing Disability NGO. Considering the poor social/economic situation, prevalent in Albania, changing from relief programs to development ones has frustrated many people as they see their need to eat and clothe their families as the primary need. To explain the importance of developing long term initiatives on disability issues has taken time. All activities within ADRF programs, like information, training , technical assistance, advice , counseling , legal support and support services like provision of mobility means and personal assistance at home or in the center all targeted mainly to disabled individuals, disability NGO, aim at supporting them to accept their own personal power in struggling for their rights and to help them accept the idea of co-operation between other disability NGO in order to be successful in obtaining their future objectives.
Being consistent in its philosophy of ?Social model? of disability which believes that the problems experienced by disabled people are result of discrimination and barriers which prevent them from participating fully in the society and from ensuring reasonable quality of their life, ADRF target through its activities also the community at large as well as the governmental institutions at all levels in order to tackle with these barriers. So on one side ADRF is empowering disabled people and disability NGOs, and on the other side with their full involvement and different other strategies ADRF is also trying to influence changes in attitudes and policies leading to positive non discrimination actions from the government and all the society.
It has been obvious the significant role that ADRF has been playing especially at the process of enforcing existing legislation and development of advocacy mechanism and public awareness, but still more expertise , capacities and support is needed in its attempts of ensuring a significant , sustainable and real change in the lives of PWD in Albania . |
Albanian
