Aku Christy Orduh

Aku Christy Orduh provides disabled people with the tools necessary to gain economic self-sufficiency and full integration into society.

Christy recognizes that current efforts to integrate people with disabilities into society are often severely hampered by societal prejudice and unrelenting poverty. Unless these fundamental problems are tackled, current rehabilitation and reintegration programs will not be successful. Addressing these challenges, Christy focuses on three primary areas. First, she attempts to lessen societal prejudice through the development of enabling and non-discriminatory environments in which people with and without disabilities can interact. Second, she creates programs that respond to the physical, educational, and economic needs of disabled people. And finally, she works to enact legislation to protect the rights of people with disabilities. As a focal point of her public awareness campaigns and advocacy work, Christy has developed the first Nigerian learning center, a place where able-bodied and disabled people are trained alongside each other and where the disabled are sometimes the instructors for able-bodied students. As she provides them with the means to become economically self-sufficient, she simultaneously breaks down the societal stereotype of the disabled as burdens to society. Christy is spreading her model through an expanding basic education curriculum and vocational training program at the center and through the creation of similar centers in neighboring areas.

Nigeria has ten million people with disabilities, about nine million of whom live below the poverty line. The main source of income for disabled people is street begging, and housing for these individuals consists primarily of makeshift dwellings which provide little or no protection for them or their meager belongings. Obtaining food depends on begging, and therefore primarily on luck. Education and employment opportunities are grossly limited because of prevailing discriminatory practices against this group. Indeed, families often reject their own members with disabilities, a situation which can result in severe psychological problems. Further exacerbating these challenges, Nigeria has no legislation–beyond the general laws that apply to all citizens– which protect the unique rights of disabled people.Efforts to improve the situation of people with disabilities have resulted in the establishment of institutions and homes specifically for them, most of which are run by the government or by civil society organizations. Many of the government establishments are dilapidated and poorly run. The institutions operated by civil society organizations are generally better maintained and organized, but neither the government nor the civil society organizations have been able to ensure even a reasonable rehabilitation of the disabled. The principal focus in both cases is vocational training. While this approach can help provide disabled people with the skills necessary to seek employment, this singular emphasis does not address the discrimination that severely limits their employment chances, nor does it assist them in setting up their own businesses. Furthermore, these establishments are frequently built in isolated locations, minimizing physical contact with the rest of society and thus hindering the possibility that the disabled can gain acceptance and integration into the community. In such a climate, harmful and powerful local superstitions–for example, that trading with the disabled brings bad luck– tend to persist.

Christy is creating a society conducive to the rehabilitation and integration of people with disabilities through a learning center model that integrates people with and without disabilities, through public enlightenment projects, and through government lobbying initiatives. Christy's target group is primarily disabled people who live on the streets, many of whom know there is little chance of employment and therefore see no point to education or skills training. Christy goes from street to street counseling disabled people–as well as their parents, guardians, and sometimes their religious instructors–and recruiting them for classes. Her first breakthrough came in 1992 with her successful recruitment of twenty-five disabled students. From that small beginning in a car park in central Lagos, she now has three classes of students learning on a part-time basis. Classes range from primary school level to junior secondary schools.Christy soon realized that teaching the disabled to read and write was not enough to change their situation in society. Her students needed decent housing and the opportunity for full-time education and vocational skills training in order to have a chance to create their own employment.

In 1997, Christy approached the Lagos state government with a request for a set of dilapidated buildings. Her request granted, she began to renovate the buildings, making them into an all-inclusive center with training facilities and hostel accommodations. Students who show a desire to further their education and become economically self-sufficient are sponsored by Christy's organization. In addition to basic education, Christy's center offers vocational training in shoe making, metal work and fabrication, tailoring and fashion design, poultry production, and carving. Vitally important to Christy's approach, the center's trainers also teach the disabled to become trainers themselves. Products made at the center are sold to generate revenue for the center and provide an income for the disabled producers.To aid educated students in obtaining employment, Christy successfully lobbies various state governments to hire the disabled people. She also seeks out contract work for the center, both within and without Nigeria, which provides employment for graduated and resident students.

Even with opportunities for employment, Christy knows that for disabled people to really live a fulfilling life, the social stigma associated with their condition needs to be removed, and legal protection for their rights enforced. She thus started a campaign with a leading human rights organization (Civil Liberties Organization) to draft and present a disabilities bill to the national legislature. She hopes that this bill will help protect the disabled from discriminations they face in employment and other arenas. In addition to her legislative initiatives, Christy is intensifying various public campaigns to reduce the stigma attached to the disabled.Christy is now focused on expanding the services provided in her model center and on creating branches of the center in other places. During the past year, for example, she has incorporated computer training into the Lagos center curriculum. And she is spreading her model by setting up a branch of her learning center in a rural community in Imo state.

Educated in a convent school, Christy grew up interested in helping the less privileged in society. As a young girl she was a member of the Legion group, a religious charity society. One of her Legion assignments was to visit and help the elderly and disadvantaged in the community. As an adult, she became a schoolteacher and volunteered for organizations working with women, disabled people, and street children. In 1991, she discovered a group of disabled children living in a car park and began to give them literacy classes. Her involvement with them soon deepened, and she moved the boys to a better location when the local council demolished the shack where she had provided classes. Following her experience with this group of boys, she has remained dedicated to improving the lives of people with disabilities.