Sylvia's Journal

We completed the two day Training of Trainers core curriculum for wheelchair service provision on Tuesday. We are working in two adjacent rooms in parallel. Day one and two were the same; after that we diverged. I am in the group of trainees who will be training managers of rehab centers that already do or are thinking about wheelchair services. Our sister group next door is training trainers to conduct the technical/clinical part of the training package. The last three days of the week are for training practicum. We divided the management training sessions into sections and everyone gets three shots at doing the real thing, with ample support and feedback from us, more experienced trainers.

We have a remarkable group of very passionate people, some with considerable experience. And so we are going through the sessions much faster than I am used to, just recently in Laos but also in Mongolia, Cambodia and the Philippines. Confidence is rising by the day. On Friday we will explore the variations on stakeholder meetings that are supposed to move the wheelchair agenda forward in a country. At the end of this week we will have expanded the number of people in developing countries who can take the baton in this expansive relay race.

Over lunch I heard the creation story of this wheelchair movement. People inside the story are sometimes impatient with the speed of things. For me as an outsider it is an extraordinary story of building critical mass, mobilizing and aligning people in just a couple of decades. It is a story of leadership if ever I saw one. A story of building, one by one a worldwide movement aimed to give mobility and freedom (to do whatever you want to do) to children, caregivers and adults who are currently carried by their parents, stuck in backrooms or lingering in hospitals. I am a latecomer in this movement but so very happy and proud to be inside now.