Churches Inc in Sierra Leone 2018 - Day 2
Through the Roof has a Churches Inc team in Sierra Leone for the next ten days. They'll be bringing a message of inclusion for disabled people, and working with the church and leaders there to help communities welcome, encourage, and support disabled people. Please pray for them on their trip - we'll bring you blog posts from them as often as they're able to send them through. Here's the team's report from the second day of work.
Today we met with around 16 community leaders including area chiefs. These stakeholders can play a significant role in changing attitudes within the community. We had excellent contributions from our Sierra Leonan speakers. Sahr Yillia spoke about the myth that disability is contagious, meaning children are not allowed to play with a child with disabilities or a pregnant lady is afraid that if a person with disabilities looks at her, her child will be born the same. He spoke of the need for leaders to show by their own willingness to interact with disabled people that this is untrue. A teacher was present who described one of their students with disabilities as 'troublesome'. Sahr responded, 'people say that disabled people are troublesome but I say that disabled people are positively troublesome'. A man with polio agreed explaining that in school he was always left holding the bags in PE. One day he grabbed the football and held onto it and would not let go. The head teacher asked 'why are you being so troublesome?' He replied, 'I just want to be included in the game'.
