Self-Advocacy Groups
Weekly Self-Advocacy Meetings in Ho and Helekpe helped improve the self-advocates’ ability to talk about their rights. The arts and music programs have assisted in helping the group members become aware of some of their abilities, build their confidence and work toward selecting possible vocations that they can use to be more independent.
Monthly self-advocacy meetings in Abutia and Ahunda improved the self-advocates’ ability to better understand what it means to be independent.
Training of Self-Advocacy leaders on their rights helped increase the capacity of the group leaders, and assisted in addressing challenges persons with ID (intellectual disability) face in the communities. It prepared the leaders to speak about their concerns during the programs with education officers as well as in their communities.
Drumming is the music of choice in Ghana. Everyone loves to hear drumming and to dance to drumming. So how could drumming affect people with disabilities?
Mary Jane Brown, the president of Kekeli, Inc., had the opportunity to hear the band Flame in 2011. Flame is a band from upstate New York that is comprised of people with disabilities. Brown bought one of Flame’s CDs and sent it to Carrie in Ghana. The music that Flame created inspired Carrie to think of ways that the disabled people she worked with might create music.
Kekeli was able to obtain a drum set, rattles and bells and provide a teacher to meet with students to form an inclusive, traditional drumming group.