Moving Beyond Charity Towards Disability Justice

How do we shift from a charity model that provides short-term allowances, to a rights-based approach that guarantees education, employment, and full participation for people with disabilities?

In the latest Connecting Citizens to Science podcast

episode of Backlash, Resistance and the Path to Gender Justice, Ayon Debnath, Campaign Adviser for Sightsavers and leader of the Equal Bangladesh campaign, shares his reflections:

“The government has not really been able to come out from the charity model. All they think about doing is just providing some social allowance for them and that is how they deprive their education, their job employment and social participation rights by the sake of giving some money under the social allowance.”

🎧 Listen to the full episode here or search Connecting Citizens to Science wherever you get your podcasts, including YouTube.

This episode is part of a six-part mini-series produced in partnership with two long-term gender justice programmes:

• Countering Backlash, Reclaiming Gender Justice — a six-year research programme led by the Institute of Development Studies and funded by Sida.

• Our Voices, Our Futures — a Global South-led initiative coordinated by CREA, funded by the Embassy of the Netherlands.

  
  

Through conversations with activists, researchers, and community leaders, the series explores how civic space is shrinking for those working in gender justice, and what resistance looks like in different contexts around the world.

We invite those working in gender, disability, and inclusion to reflect on this question: what does moving beyond “charity” look like in your context?

Episode 85 of Connecting Citizens to Science - Disability and Gender Justice