Our Activities
Rehabilitation and Prevention Programme
The main programme of PNL is the rehabilitation of physical disability. Since there are more than 10% of the estimated disabled among the population of Nepal, the estimated physically disabled people are more or less 5%. Since the people are mostly poor or the poor knowledge of resource or ignorant of the therapies, many disabled children and people are forced to stay at home with disabilities. Our effort to provide services to more disabled people; we are conducting, home visit services, camps and counselling centers in many villages. Among the people of hill and plain land origin, the people of Terai (plain land) are backward economically as well as socially. Naturally the people of Terai (plain land) suffer the backwardness and so do they suffer from the disability. The prevention is better than rehabilitation; therefore PNL is also focusing on the prevention of the disabilities and leprosy.
Home visit service (Physiotherapy and other skill transfer programme):
Physiotherapy is very important for the children and people with disabilities for improvement as well as to stop further get worse of problem.
Weekly counselling Center (WCC):
It is a center from where people with disability get service where home visit service is not available. In certain place of villages, target group gather on weekly basis to get services, at WCC. The centers are run in partnership with local organisations wherever it is possible. The center is chosen in such a way so that maximum people get benefit from it
Referral and Medical Services:
Through the referral service, PNL shall support for medical and surgical assistance. PNL shall support for medical treatment, surgery and other hospital services. Weekly clinic is also part of referral and medical service. It is run once on every Sunday.
Disability Camp:
PNL runs disability camp for easy accessibility of services. The camp is intend to provide service to people in remote area where people are unaware of the rehabilitation service or are unable to get service due to poverty.
General Health Check up Camp:
The objective of general health check-up camp is the early detection of disability cases and to provide the general health check-up of remote villages and poor communities’ people. There are many villages which have very poor access to health service. The poverty is the main causes for it, as some people do not even have bus fare to travel to health centers.
Assistive devices distribution:
The assistive devices are meant for the rehabilitation, prevent the further disability, and ease in the movement and also to assist for the capacity building for people with disability. The assistive devices distributed are well benefiting to clients. PNL provides wheelchair, tricycles, modified shoes, modified table and chairs, cruets etc as per need of disabled and leprosy affected people.
Diagnosis and treatment of Leprosy affected people:
PNL has been providing the service for the Leprosy affected people since 2005 to assist the government of Nepal to eliminate the leprosy. The people from any districts can come to PNL to obtain this service.
Skin Check up and Treatment Service:
This is a part of Leprosy programme in which the patients with the skin problems will be checked and provided medicine with small charge. The objective of the skin check up and treatment service is to help in diagnosis of the Leprosy. People visit for the skin problems and since the leprosy also causes the skin problem, the leprosy people also visit the check up center where it will be helpful to find the leprosy cases.
Provide Septic Surgery to Leprosy Patients:
People suffered from the leprosy are always vulnerable for the ulcer on the feet or hands. The ulcers are found especially in legs because of damage of sensory nerves and their feet do not feel and also that the skin remains dry. PNL is providing septic surgery locally with the help of local doctor.
Transit Home Service:
Transit home service is provide especially for the leprosy affected people who are provided surgical treatment locally or one who needs to be referred different hospital for treatments. In transit home the leprosy affected people can stay for few days which depend on the service that one needs.
Ensuring new leprosy clients are registered at treatment unit:
Since the PNL does not continue providing drugs at its center as per the government policy to provide the drugs at local health offices, they are referred to local health office with Cross Referral Slip. PNL confirms whether the patients are registered in their own health office at local level or not.
Contact Examination for the Leprosy:
Contact examination is to make early detection of leprosy and make sure that they are not transmitted to family members and neighbours. The family members of the leprosy affected people and their neighbours are examined to find the infection.
Capacity Building Programme of Target Group
Most of the people with disability are socially back ward. The main reason for it is that they are not provided opportunity. In some cases the parents of disabled children do not want to invest on them as the output from the disabled children is poor. To build the capacity of the disabled people, it is also necessary to build the capacity of their family members. It is also equally important to make the family members of the disabled people to build their capacity as they have direct relation with the disabled people. Therefore PNL has been conducting the programme to build the capacity of disabled people as well as their family members. It also involves the capacity building of the groups (Parent Group- PG), the group which will be an independent to run their group. Therefore more programmes are integrated to strengthen the group. Please see the sustainability of programme for the more detail.
Get together of Students with disabilities:
Students get together is conducted among the disabled students supported by PNL. Program is intended to introduce the students to each other, expose the talents whose talents are stagnated due to lack of opportunity and to know about the children how our support is working etc. In the one day get together students are provided environment to participate in songs, games, dance competition etc where they take part actively. To encourage the participants the position holders in the competition are provided prizes.
Get together of PGs:
PG get together programme is conducted with objective to introduce with the members of PGs, entertain, socialise the disabled people and their family and build their capacity. Programme is also intended for the team spirit among different PG members, raise the feeling of competitions, learn the way to struggle in the life, take life positively etc.
PG Committee’s Exposure visits:
As a part of capacity building of PG committee exposure visit is done in organisation working in the field of disability. The committee members of the PG will be involved in the exposure visit. The programme helps to build the capacity of the PG committee to lead the PG group. The objective of the programme is to develop better relation among the members of PG, build capacity to lead the group, encourage the members to lead the group etc.
Special game:
Special game is organised by PNL once every year. This is a game in which only the disabled people can take part to expose one’s ability. The programme is intended to encourage the disabled people to compete in the game so that they learn to compete in their real life, give opportunity to expose in the public places and aware the people about disability and increase team spirit among the PGs.
Education support:
To give an opportunity to disabled children to gain the knowledge and to live better life, PNL has been supporting children with disabilities for education. Most of the disabled children are from poor family who are unable to afford for the education of children or the parents are not interested to invest on the disabled children. The children are supported on the basis of economic status of the family. We always seek the investment from the family and school or community. PNL is also providing support to disabled people for the higher education i.e. for the disabled students studying in Campuses.
Parent Group and Parent Group fund:
To work for the rights and welfare of people with disability, PNL has been forming Parent Group (PG). The group works for the rights and welfare of disabled people in local level. This group is provided small amount of money for revolving fund to for the income-generation. From this fund the group members can take loan to run income generation projects.
Saving Credit Group:
As a part of programme to make the people with disabilities to become self sustain and improve the economic condition, Saving Credit Groups are formed from the existing or new PG groups. To start the group, a small amount of money supported initially and also the group is provided the technical knowledge to run the saving credit program.
Vocational Trainings and Income-generation Project
As a holistic approach to rehabilitate the disabled and leprosy affected people, PNL supports for the income-generation too. The objective is to make the disabled and leprosy affected people or their family with better economic status so that they can at least run their daily life. The employment for the disabled people is always very scares so PNL have been supporting the disabled people and their family members for the income generation. Following are the some approaches taken for the income generation for the beneficiaries.
Vocational Trainings:
As per demand of the clients and assessment of PNL, PNL has been providing different vocational trainings. To name some: computer’s basic operation skill, goat keeping, Tailoring etc.
Direct assistance for income-generation:
Direct assistance for the income-generation is to provide the support to disabled or leprosy affected people who are very poor in generating the income. Disabled or leprosy affected people can obtain loan from the PG fund for income generation but the very poor disabled people are not able to easily get the loan from the PG fund because the PG does not trust for the loan. Therefore PNL has been providing direct support to these people for income generation for which one is provided small amount of money in full or partial grant.
Social Communications
Without the awareness there is no possibility of reduction in the numbers of people with physical disabilities. Therefore PNL has been conducting awareness among the people in the local community and schools. PNL will keep the awareness programme among its important programme. Publicity is also as important as awareness because only after knowing the resources target group will be able to use the resources.
Objectives:
• To make the society aware of causes of disability, prevention etc
• To change in attitude of people towards the disabled people
• To make the society which respects the rights of disabled people
• Early detect of people with disabilities (earlier is the problem detected, higher is the probability of correction)
PNL has been raising awareness through messages in hoarding boards, providing books on disability to libraries and other institutes, awareness raising programme in local communities, awareness in school among students and teachers, orientation programmes, street drama etc.