Six steps to improve the lives of people with disability in Bangladesh unveiled in new report

A new report has been released to help development projects worldwide be more inclusive and beneficial for people with disabilities, including Bangladesh.

The Inclusive Futures consortium, led by Sightsavers and the International Disability Alliance (IDA), has released "Driving change: six principles for inclusive development." It features six game-changing principles that put experiences and theory into action and aim to transform the lives of millions of people with disabilities.

"By adopting our six principles in your work, you could help change the lives of millions of people with disabilities. If not, many will continue to be impoverished," said Amrita Rejina Rozario, country director at Sightsavers Bangladesh. "To drive change at the scale needed to reach up to 16% of the world's population, we now need professionals working across the global development sector to put what we've learned into practice."

From 2019 to 2023, the Inclusive Futures consortium—comprised of 20 development and disability rights organisations—implemented 12 projects in Bangladesh, Kenya, Nepal, Nigeria, and Tanzania, gathering evidence on what succeeds, what falls short, and the underlying reasons for creating inclusive development programmes. Drawing on the lessons from this extensive on-the-ground experience, the consortium has formulated the six fundamental principles to help transform how the development sector approaches disability inclusion.