We had a meeting with the Network for people living with Disabilities in Chongwe at their furniture workshop on Chalimbana road. The purpose of the meeting was for us to find out how climate change affects people who are differently abled and to establish a relationship with them so that we could support one another in our activities in Chongwe.
We met with the deputy chair Mr Chifushi and the treasurer Mr Imbuwa Kayambila.
Mr Kayambila said the Chongwe network for people with disabilities advocates for the rights and welfare of people living with disabilities. The network has 19 clubs who engage in various activities to better their lives.
“We have cooperatives for mothers with children with disabilities, we have groups for men with disabilities and we have groups for youths with disabilities. Our advocacy work involves going to hospitals, schools and other relevant offices to make sure they are accessible to people with disabilities.”
Mr Kayambila explained that 7 cooperatives from their network applied for grants from the Constituency Development Fund and all of them were funded to engage in various projects.
Mr Chifushi explained that the drought during the 2022 and 2023 farming season was especially hard for people living with Disabilities because most of them engage in farming and gardening.
“Climate change has affected us very badly because most of us engage in farming but for you to do the farming where the land is dry is very difficult, especially the previous two years when we had severe drought. Some of us keep animals and even the animals were severely affected because there was no grass for them to eat.”
We discussed our tree planting work and offered to do workshops with some of the clubs as we approach the rain season. We also offered to donate nitrogen fixing trees for some of the members to plant with their maize fields to help them get better yields and rely less on artificial fertilizer.
We have scheduled a meeting with a few select clubs where we are going to introduce our project to them and start organisation for an agroforestry workshop.
