Livelihoods
Leonard Cheshire Disability also creates an environment that provides everyday living for people living with disabilities. This strategy helps equip service users to become self-reliant so that a relapse of unwholesome suffering among the disabled could be forestalled. The office therefore provides disabled homes with training and micro-credit at the points of operations.
In Sierra Leone, Ghana and Liberia, over 100 parents of disabled children have been provided with micro-credit revolving loans. A training session was also organised for ex-service users and instructors in Kumasi. The participants were introduced to basic job costing and sources of funding available to small-scale enterprises and were also given micro-credit loans to undertake various economic ventures, including dressmaking, embroidery and tailoring, batik tie and dye, making footwear, and bags and wreath making.
These activities had made it possible for an average number of eight people with disabilities to graduate with the requisite skills to start their own businesses- hence, gradually building the confidence of parents and guardians in the work of the Cheshire service. See case study…