Our country has about 6 million people with disabilities, yet when you go out you very rarely see people with disabilities. This is because most people with disabilities are confined to their homes, in cramped living spaces, because public facilities are hard to access and because of social prejudice in a world made only for people without disabilities.
All they need is a chance
On 2 December, the Disability Research and Capacity Development Center (DRD) held a programme to celebrate its 10th anniversary and International Day of Persons with Disabilities on 3 December. At the festival, a thousand people with and without disabilities could not help admiring the people who, though impaired in part of their bodily functions, are full of determination and successful.
One of them is Le Minh Duy, a young man with a severe disability who has to get around by wheelchair, but who has worked hard at his studies and at work to prove himself. Duy graduated from university only 2 years ago, but has already been trusted by the Cogini Hongkong Limited group to appoint him Head of its Representative Office in Viet Nam, leading 30 staff who are people without disabilities.
The dream of Vo Thi Hoang Yen, like that of the community of people with disabilities, is that the world will be built for everyone (photo: Loan Luong)
The community of people with disabilities also admires Vo Thi Hoang Yen, founder of DRD, who has persistently supported the community of people with disabilities for more than 10 years. With her efforts and her dream, she sought out every resource to build DRD, bringing programmes supporting people with disabilities from abroad to Viet Nam.
Hoang Yen’s leg was impaired after a bout of polio fever when she was 3 years old; one leg lost its ability to move, and the other is very weak. She can only move with crutches, and only over a short distance. But Hoang Yen still worked hard at her studies, earning 2 university degrees, a master’s degree in the US, and is now doing a PhD in Australia.
The image of Luu Thi Anh Loan, Director of DRD, with a leg that limps because of muscle atrophy after a severe fever, yet with a very confident manner, also drew admiring praise from everyone. Although her leg is atrophied and has lost all mobility, thanks to training, Anh Loan can still walk on two legs, albeit with some difficulty.
With those limping legs, she covered the long distances to school and climbed the stairs to class for years to pursue her university studies, then a master’s degree in the US. Today, she is one of the country’s leading experts in organising activities to support people with disabilities, with more than 10 years of experience in this field.
Le Minh Duy pointed to the powered wheelchair he uses and said: “I have got to where I am today thanks to the support of a great many social organisations. Thanks to being given this powered wheelchair, I was able to get to class and complete my university course. Thanks to being hired and given the chance to prove myself, I have achieved the success I have today. From that, I have learned that, if only people with disabilities are given opportunities and support to integrate, we can rely on ourselves to overcome difficulties and live well like everyone else”.
Although there are still many barriers, people with disabilities in Viet Nam are constantly striving to rise up (photo: Loan Luong)
A world for everyone
According to Vo Thi Hoang Yen, our state has many humane policies to support the lives of people with disabilities. However, these policies mainly give them “the fish” rather than creating “the fishing rod” for people with disabilities to rely on themselves, work and support themselves.
She said: “For the community of people with disabilities to develop sustainably, there need to be policies that enable people with disabilities to go out to study and work, and support them to integrate into society. To do that, we want to build a world that can be for everyone, including both people without disabilities and people with disabilities”.
In her view, the world today is only for people without disabilities, while people with disabilities find it very hard to access. She said: “A group of Swedish students once told me they were very surprised that they had toured Ho Chi Minh City for a whole week and hardly saw any people with disabilities. They were surprised because, from their books, they knew that Viet Nam has a great many people with disabilities as a result of the war and chemical agents. That is nothing strange! Because very few people with disabilities in Viet Nam dare to go out, people rarely see them”.
“It is not that people with disabilities do not want to go out. It is not that people with disabilities want to hide away in a corner of the house all their lives. They want to go out very much! It is just that who lets them go out? When our roads do not allow wheelchairs to move! When schools and public works are full of steps. When even parks are fenced off so wheelchairs cannot get in!”, Yen said angrily.
The community of people with disabilities hopes that society will no longer have barriers like this one
According to Vo Thi Hoang Yen, the world today is also hard for people with disabilities to access because of the social prejudice against them. She said: “When I was small I dreamed of becoming a doctor like my father, to treat people. Growing up, I wanted to be a writer, travelling everywhere and retelling the scenes of life I had seen. But people advised me to study foreign languages, because they said that field suited me and would make it easy to find work. Yet when I took my degree to apply for jobs, everyone was happy with my knowledge, but when they saw my impaired legs, they shook their heads. No one gave me the chance to prove I could do the work. From the very start, they were prejudiced that people with disabilities cannot work!”.
For that reason, Vo Thi Hoang Yen believes that our world today is only for people without disabilities. She dreams of changing that, so that the world can be for everyone. That is a world in which both people without disabilities and people with disabilities are given the conditions to study and work, to work for themselves to earn a living and seek success and happiness!
Le Minh Duy agreed: “That is my dream too, and I think all people with disabilities like me dream the same. A world for everyone!”.
Tung Nguyen_http://dantri.com.vn/