Most NGOs have two arms to them. The first is the one that established them
as providers of information, advice and guidance, possibly backed up by legal
rights and/or group forums. The second leg rests on policy, campaigns and
advocacy. There may also be a service delivery leg that is possibly based upon
innovation in resolving a specific need and often for a specific impairment.
Sometimes the innovation is in integration with mainstream services and
sometimes the innovation is in specialist provision. But is another leg possible.
One that connects people to resources or the means of generating their own
resources. The Disability Resilience Network could take this route, we urge you
to support us to test this option and indeed to succeed so that you may come
to see it as a route for you too.
Resources are manifold; they may include money, food, shelter but also the
resources described as social capital that are generated through social
relationships, and these could include acts of neighbourliness, lifts, informal
childminding, etc. Resources may have intermediate stages such as a particular
knowledge or skill and intermediate generators too such as the people with
community development skills or even simply those people willing to host the
meetings. Some resources may be near permanent such as gardening
equipment for an allotment whereas others may be short lived such as
cartridge ink for a printer. Naturally many of these resources are not visible so
local authorities and the voluntary sector are investing considerable efforts
into compiling directories and mapping their existence. Once known it may be
possible to bring them into play, even share them. It may also be possible to
convert the money spent guarding buildings and equipment into training
people in the skills to operate the same machinery instead.
Increasingly it is possible for disabled people to commission their own
resources, design them and even to make them. There are now more than
twenty digital fabrication laboratories or fab labs in the UK. Most of these fab
labs are open to the general public for them to gain access to the machines on
at least one day a week. I recommend Dr Ursula Hurley’s book on our
collaboration called “In the Making: Digital Fabrication and disability” to those
wishing to follow up their interest. It is possible to print everything from a
wheelchair to a new hip bone. There are websites where you can upload new
designs or download existing prototypes.
Disabled people themselves can revolutionise access to information by sharing
their insights and experiences on user generated video clips (for instance of
the welfare system) via a digital platform. I have developed two apps that
house this possibility. The second one called bResilient allows users to
download the url for video content that is already on the net. I hope to bring
you more on this shortly.
Of course money itself is a vital resource and how to create value is explored in
Bernard Lietaer’s book and again more recently in Charles Eisenstein’s book,
“Sacred Economics”, Both books describe alternate and already successful
systems such as Fureai Kippu from Japan, a system of the exchange of credits
for meeting much of the social care needs of people living and ageing in their
own communities.
These approaches are not offered as replacements for state support but as
supplements to state sponsored provision. The Government appears to be
withdrawing its previous commitment to disabled people as evidenced by the
five weeks wait between applying for universal credit and obtaining this form
of social security. The DRN will not simply look to close that gap through its
dialogue with Government but to offer the claimants options for self- directed,
self-sufficient and mutual support.
So what is possible in the future? Could the DRN not simply listen to people as
my own local authority has declared its wish to but go further and equip
people with the means of intervening in their own predicament and begin
resolving their own needs. I don’t know but what I do know is that every
question that starts with the words, what if gets answered. We therefore need
to ask more and bigger questions with greater expectancy of an adequate
answer. Somebody somewhere once told us: “Ask and you shall receive.”
Disabled people are resourceful, they need opportunities not penalties. I have
on occasion been asked, how would you land the policy transformation? One
answer for DRN supporters to consider is this. The UK economy was the fifth
biggest in the world, but it has just lost that position to India. Other countries
are also set to march past us. Those countries where everyone is a participant
and where everyone is a resilitator committed to furthering the aspirations of
their fellow human beings are set to steal a march on us. I end with a
prediction: equality will turn out to be our motivation that eliminates the UK
productivity gap. Our best resource are our people. Support them. All of them.
Visit www.disabilityresiliencenetwork.com and join the DRN