Empowerment – Stigma Elimination – RECLAIM

Mainudin's Self Help Group

Linked to the Self Care Training and the Self Care Cells that have grown out of it has been the establishment of Self-help Groups to enable those re-adjusting to everyday life to meet challenges together. These groups have become effective at reducing stigma in their communities, and bringing development and successful income generation activity to the group members. They also encourage new cases of leprosy to report for treatment and even detect a significant number of new cases themselves. The Stigma Elimination Programme – or STEP for short – began in 2002 as a pilot project. The 10 Groups established at that time are still functioning and in most cases are now independent NGOs in their own right and support newer groups as they become established. These groups are a major success story and have played a key role in reducing the stigma of leprosy in their communities. Evaluations carried out after the pilot project showed conclusively that people previously unable to participate in community life due to ostracism caused by leprosy, were almost fully integrated again after the STEP programme.

A Self Help Group in Action

As a part of the STEP programme, pioneering Community-Based Empowerment and Rehabilitation activities are helping people marginalised as a result of leprosy to become the principal agents of change in issues affecting their own lives. As they begin to play significant roles in their communities, their status is enhanced, helping reduce the stigma of leprosy. The leader of one of the early groups, Mr Muslim, was honoured at government level in 2010 with a national award for his services to reducing stigma against people affected by leprosy. Another group leader, Mainudin Dafali, whose group is pictured above, was awarded the Wellesley Bailey Award in 2011 by The Leprosy Mission International, for his achievements. Mainudin is badly disabled by leprosy, but has done much work to improve the conditions of his group members and his community. He also started a blood donation scheme.

Mainudin receiving his award in Thailand

There are now over 50 of these groups working, involving nearly 2000 people directly, and affecting many more than that. Many groups have invited people with other kinds of disability to join them as well so that about 30% of group members do not have leprosy themselves.

RECLAIM is a new programme that develops STEP further and is funded by donors with a strong interest in leprosy and a focus on working amongst communities to reduce poverty and stigma. RECLAIM will ensure that disabled people, and particularly those disabled by leprosy, will initiate and participate in activities that will reduce poverty, and will work to realize the rights of people with disabilities, as set out by the UN Convention. RECLAIM will involve establishing another ten self help groups each year for at least the next 5 years, and from this we hope to see a “ripple effect” as more and more communities have their attitudes changed about leprosy, and other disability. We believe that these groups and the RECLAIM programme will be a real key to seeing leprosy eliminated in the Nepal Terai regions, and people with disabilities being able to enjoy a more fulfilling life.