The Abilis Foundation’s mission is to support disabled people and their organisations in developing countries.
This does not sound
particularly extraordinary, but the exceptional significance of the Foundation will become
apparent during the course of this article.
In the early 1970s, Finnish university students, including myself, founded the disabled people’s human rights
organisation Threshold Association. Soon after this, I travelled to the United States
to get acquainted with the
local disabled people’s movement. I was overwhelmed when I saw how proud disabled people were of
themselves. This had an enormous influence on a young man like me, and ever since I have always considered
it important to be engaged in international collaboration in addition to grassroots activities.
In 1980, the Disabled People’s International (DPI) was founded, and I became an enthusiastic participant. In
1990, I was elected DPI’s vice president of development, and I became the organisation’s president in 1994. I
travelled aroun
d the world to get acquainted with disabled people’s associations.
In 1989, the Finnish disabled people’s organisations active in development cooperation together founded
FIDIDA, the Finnish Disabled People’s International
Development Association, now called the Disability
Partnership Finland. It and its affiliate organisations still implement and manage projects that support the
disabled.
The Finnish government, i.e. the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, supported development aid projects of NGOs by
financing 80% of approved expenses (currently 92.5% in projects that target disabled people). This system was
excellent, but on the other hand very slow and rigid.
In developing countries I had seen how disabled people’s organisations struggled with financial problems –
just as the Threshold Association did at the beginning. I had also seen how big money (granted too easily at the
wrong time) had destroyed several disabled people’s associations. Large
amounts of money granted by
European organisations did not always lead to permanent changes, but they did cause corruption.
In the mid 1990s, the leading Finnish politician Pertti Paasio carried out an evaluation of Finnish development
cooperation, and one of his recommendations was the creation of new funding opportunities. I came up with the
idea of a foundation that would directly support disabled people’s organisations in developing countries and
would be directly financed by the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Pekka Haavisto, then minister responsible
for development cooperation, supported the idea and sent me to meet the permanent
state under-secretary
Kirsti Lintonen. She said that the ministry would finance such a foundation if I were able to raise the legally
required minimum starting capital.
I will not go into detail here about how we managed to collect that sum,
but it took time, energy, plenty of
friends, and support from friendly quarters. But the money was raised, and the Abilis Foundation was founded at
the beginning of 1998.
It was founded by private individuals. The majority of the board members are themselves disabled and activists
in organisations for disabled people. The basic idea of Abilis is for disabled people to help other disabled people.
Its organisation as a foundation provides the best organisational structure because a foundation only focuses on
the activities defined in its charter, a foundation cannot be taken over (unlike an association), and a foundation’s
assets can only be used as determined in its charter.
The Abilis Foundation naturally has its own criteria for providing aid. A core activity consists of providing small
grants of up to 10,000 euros for disabled people’s organisations in developing countries. Higher amounts are
granted to organisations with which we have had good experiences and that have the necessary know-how for
larger projects. We provide mainly non-recurring assistance on a one-
off basis. We promote disabled women’s
activities, human rights, different kinds of training and education, and projects that generate income.
The application procedure is quite simple: A disabled people’s organisation
from a developing country
contacts us, receives an application form, fills it in, and sends it back. We check
that the applicant is not a
swindler, and our board of di
rectors decides, on the basis of the secretariat’s proposal, whether to support the
project. We give 50% of the total grant at the beginning, 40% after receiving the first project report, and the final
10% after the final project report.
The process sounds easy, but there are often problems since the applicants are often real grassroots
organisations. Lack of education and experience and the poor infrastructure in developing countries make things
more complicated. The Abilis Foundation helps its applicants cope
with the necessary bureaucracy, and
manuals written by the Foundation have already been translated into many languages.
According to studies, financial aid is mostly used for the purposes stated in the applications,
for concrete
activities. These can be, for example, a small henhouse in a village, a couple of cows for young disabled women,
a human rights course, or an internet cafe. Each and every result is important for individual disabled people and
also for their organisations. Our policy is to finance a project only if disabled people participate in it from the very
beginning. Many projects financed by other organisations support disabled people without letting them
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