NLR Nepal has initiated ‘Model work Municipalities on inclusive development’ as some of the demonstration sites for further replication to remaining areas of the country based on the external evaluation done about “Our village model village” project.

Expansion of ‘disabilities friendly model villages’ area to cover the whole municipality where we had started the project from 2018 in the current changing socio-political context are the main attraction of this project. This project further aims to incorporate disability issues as cross cutting for holistic development package program schemes together with the local government and facilitate the government to have their ownership. Some organizational enhancement components are added to this project so that this project can influence against stigma & discriminations as well as mainstreaming of leprosy to general disabilities. To promote disabilities prevention & management, from our experiences of previous work in Jhapa, Inspire2Care project activities are planned to start in 15 (10 old municipalities and 5 more municipalities added in 2019 as replication and or expansion) municipalities as the component of Inclusive Development model work that covers some sort of services needed for Persons With Disabilities & persons affected by leprosy.

NLR Nepal, together with Local Government, has designed a package programme under the heading of “Inclusive Development”, including five project components. The integrated package programme is being implemented in fifteen municipalities of province no 1 and 7 under a Memorandum of Understanding between the local Government and NLR Nepal. These components are:

1. Leprosy Prevention (PEP) and Leprosy Control – A separate project run by NLR branch office
2. Disability prevention through I2C – run by NLR national organisation (NGO)

• Disability Inclusive Development (DID) – run by NLR national organisation (NGO)

1. Comprehensive WASH – run by NLR national organisation (NGO)
2. Organizational Strengthening – A separate project run by NLR branch office

Advocacy & lobbying at the policy level, networking, empowerment and capacity building are the major aims of this project. Persons With Disabilities can receive the required services such as treatment and devices, either from Government schemes or existing rehabilitation centers and the organization like National Federation of Disabled Nepal (NFDN) can establish the linkage for that. At the current situation NFDN and its network needed to be strengthening for disability rights and advocacy.

Summary and Conclusion

Since this Inclusive Development program has been included in the long term plan of the municipalities with budget provision including the continuation of the Community Based Rehabilitation Facilitators staff, this might be one of the best examples that the collaborative project has turn into a long term practice fully owned by the local Government.

But because of the NLR core area and the funding constrain some of the project needs consideration in continuing for long-term. Analyzing the above information and scenario of Inclusive Development (Zero disability and Zero Exclusion), NLR Nepal is planning to run or exit the existing projects/component of program in the following manner.

But NLR is still interested in integrating some component (WASH) in Inclusive Development keeping leprosy and disability as a core area if funding from other donor/sources is available.

National Federation of the Disabled
Nepal (NFDN) and District Health office (DHO)
NNSWA
Model work Municipalities for Inclusive Development
Provincial Leprosy Referral Centre (PLRC)