Stories and significant changes
Louise Redshull: Significant Change Story
- Name:
- Louise Redshull
- Home town:
- Lavendon, Buckinghamshire, UK
- Exchange:
- Birminhgam - Nepal
Living as a person with a disability in Nepal gave me the opportunity to learn about and challenge existing perceptions of disability which were present. Many of the people in the community including students in the school in which I worked had had very little contact with disabled people. Popular perceptions of disabled people included pity and beliefs that they were disabled due to something bad they had done in a past life. For example I overheard some people saying that it would be better not to be alive if you couldn't see after they had met me.
During the three months I spent in Nepal I managed to challenge and significantly change some of these negative perceptions held by some people in the community. This was achieved partly through holding a disability awareness day for students and teachers in the school I was working in as well as for other people in the community including our host homes. Although this helped alter some people's perceptions, I think that the biggest way I achieved this was by living and working in the community and interacting with the people who lived there.
I only realised I had changed people's perceptions of disability towards the end of the programme. During the end of programme evaluation my placement supervisor told me that he had hardly noticed my disability and saw me first and foremost as someone who is equal to everybody else. Students in letters they wrote me for my birthday also said that they now saw me the same as they would any other teacher. They said that they realised people with disabilities aren't different from non-disabled people and they can still work and be productive in society. For example Sasita said "although you are blind but you do many types of good work." Finally, in my host home the more they got to know me the more they let me help out with some domestic tasks as they realised that being blind wasn't a barrier.
The effect of this change is that people began to treat me in the same way as they would any other volunteer, seeing me not just the disability. Some people in the community did not feel so much pity for me either. This change could help other people who are disabled who visit or live in the community as they may now be seen more positively. Hopefully people will go on to treat other disabled people they meet in a more positive way.
I feel this change is significant because it potentially could improve things for other disabled people. Also I managed to share my culture and the way disabled people are treated in the UK with people in Nepal (including some other disabled people) and allow these people to learn new ideas and challenge existing perceptions. If one person in the community goes on to one day treat a disabled person in a more positive way due to them observing me in the community then I will have made a worthwhile and significant change.