Phnom Penh: The social enterprise, Agile Development, has hosted a workshop for women and youth entrepreneurs with disabilities. The “co-creation” workshop, held virtually on Thursday, promotes a human-centered design which will help create opportunities for persons with disabilities, especially women. It tackled the barriers to the inclusion of these entrepreneurs in the kingdom, supported by an international development non-profit organisation, PACT, together with USAID and the government’s Disability Action Council led by its Secretary General, Em Chan Makara.
Makara expressed his appreciation for the initiative saying it will increase the confidence, knowledge and skills of women with disabilities in all target provinces. It will also create a national network for young men and women with disabilities through online and social media platforms such as Facebook.
He says, “The Royal Government has identified the disability work as a priority, including the promotion of gender equality, as part of the National Strategic Plan on Disability, in which young persons with disabilities are given the opportunity to actively participate in education and employment; especially the opportunity to compete in skills such as art, sports and IT. Six young persons with disabilities have won the Asia-Pacific IT competition and become civil servants working for the General Secretariat of the Disability Action Council. Young persons with disabilities are the successors of the next generation if you work hard to turn disabilities into opportunities. The use of this human-centred design in the workshop will help in identifying barriers young persons with disabilities are facing and find potential solutions to challenges. I would like to take this opportunity to call on persons with disabilities throughout the country to continue to strictly follow the guidelines of the Ministry of Health at all levels against Covid-19, including vaccination, for us to overcome this difficult situation as soon as possible”.
General Manager of the Agile Development Group, Bun Khim, says the co-creation workshop using a human-centred design for persons with disabilities will create economic opportunities as well as independent employment with innovations for entrepreneurship and this can create a socially inclusive society. Country Director of PACT, Sabine Joukes, also expressed her appreciation for the participation of the government. She says that good cooperation and constructive dialogue between different groups and the government will yield positive results.
Joukes says, “And so today, it’s really a very important for a number of reasons. As I already said, it is wonderful to see that the government here is represented and not just for the introduction speech but I do understand that he will be here for the duration of the workshop. And this workshop is not just a typical workshop, this is taking all elements from human-centred design. And that is why I’m so happy to see our women entrepreneurs living with disabilities right here. we strongly believe that they are part of the solution and not just some organisations somewhere who made note about a lot of issues etc. But we feel that no solutions that is better than the one that is created by those living with the challenges on a day-to-day basis.” She has also added that they see in general that women entrepreneurs in Cambodia need a lot of support compared to their male counterparts.
Deputy Mission Director of USAID, Hanh Nguyen,has also stressed that addressing the inequalities created by disabilities takes a united effort. She says their goal is to work with their partners to create a socio-economic environment where all Cambodians can realise their full potential regardless of physical abilities, social status, gender, sexual orientation or ethnicity.
