Ndeye Dague Gueye

Ndèye Dagué Guèye Dièye is empowering physically disabled women in Senegal to integrate themselves into society by improving medical awareness and teaching them appropriate job skills that will allow them to restore their dignity and gain respect.

Ndèye Dagué is going beyond traditional efforts that train people with physical disabilities to fit into an unwelcoming society by helping disabled women fully abandon their negative self-perception and assert their human rights. She works with disabled women to give them the skills and self-knowledge to participate in Senegalese society and simultaneously educates society to accept these women as part of their own community.
Until recently, myth dictated Senegalese attitudes toward the disabled. Already marginalized because of their gender, disabled women face a double dose of societal prejudice. Because disabled women are so marginalized, there is a lack of understanding of the health issues they face, both among the medical community and among the women themselves; this is particularly true of reproductive health issues. Ndèye Dagué is therefore ensuring that disabled women have access to the information they need to understand their condition and the effect it has on their health. She also builds awareness among disabled women, as well as medical personnel, so that the women have access to a healthcare system that respects rather than shames them.
Ndèye Dagué recognizes that economic independence is a critical component in building the dignity necessary to defend disabled people's human rights. She is helping disabled women develop marketable skills appropriate to their physical abilities. She also fosters a network of organizations for women and the disabled in order to allow individuals to work collectively toward a more just environment for disabled women. These networks also allow her to broadcast her efforts to a wide audience that is beginning to spread beyond Senegal's borders.

Physical disabilities carry a negative stigma in Senegalese society. Most of the disabled Ndèye Dagué works with have problems stemming from childhood polio. They are often viewed as "cursed" and are prone to public humiliation and mockery. As mobility is a requirement for most employment, many physically disabled people cannot maintain viable livelihoods and are forced to beg for a living. Structures currently in place have taken a piecemeal approach in dealing with this issue and tend to disregard the restoration of human rights and dignity.Polio victims face greater risks to their reproductive health than do their nondisabled counterparts; many have an asymmetric pelvis and cannot give birth vaginally. This condition forces them to undergo caesarian sections that they often cannot afford. When they do seek medical care, they are faced with medical staff that do not understand their needs and with facilities that they cannot navigate. Furthermore, as disabled women in Senegal are marginalized in two ways–one because of their gender and two because of their disability–these women are often the victims of multiple crimes. The lack of public medical knowledge regarding disabilities and the absence of an available forum for discussing them fuel prejudices against them.

Ndèye Dagué gives disabled women the skills and self-knowledge they need to become fully integrated members of Senegalese society.
The first element of her two-pronged mission helps disabled women understand the health issues they face because of their disabilities. Ndèye Dagué founded the Woman's Section of the National Association for the Physically Disabled (ANHMS). It organizes film viewings about pertinent health topics followed by discussions with sociologists and doctors who can answer questions. The women receive vital information about their reproductive health, helping them to dispel the myths that surround their condition and replace them with medical facts. The doctors discuss subjects like family planning, the importance of prenatal visits to the doctor, and the possible necessity of having a caesarian section instead of giving birth naturally.
However, informing disabled women is only one facet of Ndèye Dagué's plan. The Woman's Section of ANHMS is working to make medical personnel, and the public in general, aware of the problems disabled women face. The Woman's Section is working with medical staff to lower the high costs of caesarian sections and helping medical facilities realize and eliminate the physical obstacles that their facilities pose to disabled women.
The second part of Ndèye Dagué's strategy involves training disabled women so that they may become economically self-sufficient. Ndèye Dagué's organization offers courses in literacy as well as skills like sewing and tapestry for those people who because of their disability are unable to use sewing machines, thus allowing the women to generate income. In addition, a credit-rotating system has been established to help the most impoverished members of the Woman's Section move closer to self-sufficiency.
Ndèye Dagué works to publicize the plight of disabled women with a support network that links the Woman's Section of the ANHMS with other women's organizations and organizations supporting disabled people. She runs joint programs with associations for the hearing-impaired, albinos, people with leprosy, and the blind. She also conducts advocacy programs throughout the region.
The Woman's Section has participated in every national vaccination day against polio since 1997. The accompanying radio broadcast and televised debates have served as other outlets through which to raise awareness about the detrimental effects of polio. Ndèye Dagué uses this publicity to advertise the work of the Woman's Section and explain current medical advancements that allow polio-afflicted children to attend normal schools and adults to live dignified lives. She has also organized multiple events, including Disabled Women's Day, the National 15 Days on Women, the Women's Section fundraising gala evening, a roundtable and forum discussions, radio programs, television shows, and print articles. She has established a legal advocacy program for the disabled through which she has gone to the extent of engaging in judicial proceedings to restore the rights of one of its members and negotiated with public authorities to provide grants for disabled children while giving them priority to attend public schools closer to their homes.

Though Ndèye Dagué grew up with polio, her father, a teacher, wanted to ensure that she succeeded in life despite her physical disability. Thus, she attended school just like her brothers and sisters and had to help with the domestic chores. Today, Ndèye Dagué bears the imprint of this parental support along with the knowledge gained from her four years of training as a teacher.
As a young woman, Ndèye Dagué began vigorously promoting disabled women's rights by raising awareness among parents of disabled children. She advised these parents to let their children finish school and helped them find orthopedic centers where they could obtain wheelchairs or other necessary equipment for their children. In 1984 she became active in a local branch of the ANHMS, which she had learned about at the beginning of her teaching career.
In 1990 Ndèye Dagué created a preschool that provided an opportunity for disabled and nondisabled children to attend school together, thereby ensuring social integration at a young age. To teach at the school, she hired educated disabled adults who could not find jobs elsewhere. Her school has become a model for the creation of other projects in that province.
With 19 other women, Ndèye Dagué created the Woman's Section within the ANHMS in September 1996 and was elected its first president. Although the original impetus for the section's founding was to teach the women to embroider, its role in disabled women's lives has expanded greatly.