FOCUS GROUP DISCUSSION REPORT

Improve Socio-Economic Status of Women and Girls with Disabilities

Executive Summary
This report summarizes the key findings of the focus group discussions (FGDs) conducted with
32 women and girls with disabilities (WGWDs) and 10 men with disabilities in Karamajiji
Disability Community and Angwan Jeshi in the FCT, Abuja. The discussions were tailored
towards harvesting the opinions of WGWDs about the proposed project intervention and
identify actions that can be included to ensure that the project responds to their needs and
contribute towards improving their social economic status. The discussion revealed a general
agreement by WGWDs with disabilities that vocational skills training and empowerment /
support to start-up savings will contribute to improve their standard of living and encourage
them to leave situations of dependency which often result to violence and abuse. They also
agreed that life skills training would help them improve their self-confidence.

Objectives
The focus group discussions were aimed at:

 Consulting the project beneficiaries on the components of the BTC project

 Identifying community-based approach to improving socio-economic status of
WGWDs
 Identifying community challenges / risks
 seeking community buy-in and improve their understanding of the project

Methodology
Karamajiji disability community and Angwan Jeshi were chosen because of its large
population of women and girls with disabilities. Four focus group discussions (for girls and
women with diabilities) were conducted with 32 WGWD and 10 men with disabilities to
explore their views. The FGDs were held separately for girls (10 – 16years old), older girls and
women (17 - 70 years old) and men (20 - 50 years old).
The project team paid a visit to the palace of the community head to seek permission to carry
out the FGDs in the community. Taking into the consideration the challenges persons with
disabilities might face with movement, a central location within community was chosen as
the venue of the focus group discussions.
For the women and girls with disabilities sets of FGDs, female members of the DRAC team
coordinated the FGDs while male members coordinated the male set of FGD. This was to
mitigate against participants being uncomfortable with expressing their thoughts freely as
required considering their religious and cultural practices.

Key findings
The main findings from data generated by the focus group discussions are summarized below.
The consultation brought about valuable information also in terms of current challenges and
concerns of women and girls with disabilities.
Livelihood
Participants are aware and have been exposed to variety of vocational opportunities in the
past and had tried to access them. These training opportunities are soap, disinfectant,
Vaseline, tie & die, bead making, hair dressing, tailoring, knitting, petty trade and catering.
Participants highlighted challenges with transportation, distance and stigmatization as the
barriers that prevented them from accessing identified vocational opportunities in the past.
When asked if they think the project will support women with disabilities to leave situations
of violence and abuse, the respondents narrated that due lack of access to opportunities that
would improve their standard of living, they are unable to live independently. Respondent 1
who is a wheel chair user explained that she has been abandoned by her husband for the past
3months with 4 children cater for and her only source of income is begging. Respondent 5
added that her husband who brought her from her village just married a second wife who is
a woman without disability and both of them treat her inhumanely, she has nowhere else to
go or anything to fall back to, she solely the depends on her husband for everything. They
both highlighted that this project if implemented will enable them “live this current situation”
and improve their standard of living.
Both women and girls in the FGD are willing to participate in the acquisition of new skills and
identified low customer patronage as a result of disability stigmatization and lack of start-up
capital as the major barriers to practising acquired skills. They highlighted that after acquiring
skills, they were left to their fate with no assistance/support to start business, most of them
have forgotten what they learnt and others have gone back to begging and relying on their
family. Some of them that were able to start up business explained that family issues are the
major consumer of their earnings if profits are made from a business.
Participants suggested business management training as the major knowledge needed to
improve their businesses. They pointed that the VSLA will be a major booster in ensuring they
develop a culture of savings. When asked if they felt that the VSLA is related to the local
community savings called ‘adashe’ they were emphatic in identifying the differences between
both and expressed a clear preference for the VSLA and its mode of administration drawing
comparisons with the adashe mode where you have to wait your turn regardless of your need,
while the VSLA allows you to draw when you have a need. It further buttressed their
preference for VSLA.

The subject of unavailability of opportunities to market their products dominated the

conversion, they participants pointed out that a lot of people would prefer to buy from
persons without disabilities because most of them (WGWD) are crawling on the floor and
appear dirty and generally people do not like to associate themselves with disability.
Leadership and Political Participation
Less than 10% of the women with disabilities have been in leadership position, the only
position available for the women in the community is “woman leader” who is often appointed
by the community head. The 40% participants showed interest in belonging to political party
and expressed need for leadership training proposed by the project.
On the issue of leadership and structure within the VSLAs, they expressed a willingness to
accommodate others (caregivers, neighbours, etc) as long as they (WWD) were in the majority
and remained the leaders and in control of the group.

Community Support
For the two communities, both men with and without disabilities were involved in the FGD.
The men agreed that the focus of the project is well tailored to achieve improve standard of
living for women and girls with disabilities and also expressed the desire to support their
wives, sisters and daughters in participating in the project because they “live a communal life
and anything that improves their standard of living will automatically improve the
community”.
Similarly, the men also expressed desire to also partake in the trainings so that they could
support their wives whenever necessary. They highlighted that cultural and religious practices
should be taken into consideration in the course of executing the project. Majority also
suggested provision of food and daily stipends for participants as well as keeping training
sessions to a maximum of 3 – 4 hours.
In mitigating the challenge of low / lack of patronage which most of the women have
experienced because of discrimination, the men pointed that creating an accessible market
within the community and making referrals will go a long way to ensure the women are able
to sale their products.
Communication / Coordination
The women with disabilities cited direct verbal communication either through phone calls or
physical meetings in their local language or through the community head as the preferred
forms of communication to and from DRAC on the progress of the project upon
commencement.
The also highlighted the woman leader, community head and chiefs are useful group in
ensuring the success of the project.
Concerns / challenges

When asked what challenges they envisaged, they responded in optimism that they couldn’t
see any challenges especially if we kept to our promise of dedicating time to train them
properly on the VSLA concept and support them in managing the processes until they get a
full grasp of it.

The girls with disabilities were more concerned about disability discrimination they
experience within the community. 80% of them have never had or completed any formal
education and were open to opportunities that will enable them access / finish their
education and life skills training.
The possibility of implementing the project was a relatively frequent question as most of the
participants have never been exposed to socio-economic opportunities. They also expressed
that a lot of NGOs have made promises to them, take their pictures and they never hear from
them or come back to implement.
All participants did not see any negative outcomes as a result of the activities of the project,
they however expressed concerns over the fact that some organizations had trained them in
past without empowering them to kick-start their businesses which rendered the acquired
skills useless.

They mentioned that they would prefer if the project did not only focus on girls with
disabilities but also on girls without disabilities, born to disabled parents as most of the girls
with disabilities are growing up side by side with girls without disabilities as sisters and friends,
and would need their support to thrive in the school environment.

Recommendation:
The participants (girls, women and men) shared the following recommendations:

 There is need to improve the life skills of girls with disabilities to enable access
opportunities like other girls without disabilities.
 Provision of food and daily stipends during the course of the trainings would
encourage participants to attend trainings while being able to cater for some family
needs.
 There is need to establish a marketplace and referral to ensure ease of doing business
by women with disabilities and mitigate against the effect of no patronage as a result
of discrimination stigmatization. This will largely contribute to sustainability.
 Participants were also encouraged to embrace an acceptable level of personal hygiene
to foster social interaction.
 The community head, men and the women leader should be notified of the project to
avoid community backlash.
 There is need to also target children of women with disabilities who are often faced
with discrimination and are exposed to same challenges persons with disabilities face.

Conclusion
Women with disabilities are relatively aware of a wide range of vocational skills and are
interested in accessing these trainings if made available. They believe that if implemented,
the project will give them opportunity to live an independent life, free from violence and
abuse that result from poverty and enable them leave situations that are not healthy. All of
the participants believe that the planned activities are enough to achieve the desired goal of
the project.
Similarly, men with disabilities are supportive of their wives, daughters and sisters accessing
trainings to improve their socio-economic status as long as religious and cultural practices are
taken into consideration by trainers.