The Young Change Makers falls under the Advocacy and Campaigns Program whose goal is to improve the living conditions of children with disabilities in Zimbabwe. The project, run by Leonard Cheshire Disability Zimbabwe, is partnering with disability service organizations in order to support 200 children with disabilities as young leaders to participate in processes where they can raise awareness of their rights and responsibilities.
As part of efforts to foster child led advocacy the project held a post budget analysis seminar whose objective was to help learners understand their role in advocating for child friendly budgets. The seminar brought together representatives of Young Change Makers clubs from two schools that the project is partnering with in Harare.
At the seminar, NANGO Senior Social Policy Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, Onias Munamati, spoke about child sensitive budgeting.
Munamati said, “The National Budget is a key instrument to ensure the progressive realisation of the social, environmental, economic and political rights of children as a disenfranchised group. Every child should have adequate standard of living and have the highest attainable standard of health and education on the basis of equality and opportunity. The fulfillment of these child rights involves costs and resources.”
Ideally elements of child friendly budgeting are child-friendly economic and social policies, transparent, accountable and participatory budget process, efficient and equitable budget allocations and expenditure as well as adequate and progressively increasing budget allocations, asserted Munamati.
He added that, to influence the 2018 National Budget, Junior Councilors developed their 2018 budget advocacy tool, the Children’s Ten Point Plan, which was used to engage the fiscal authorities. For inclusivity, a separate process comprised of Children with Disabilities was organised to gather their budget aspirations hence the development of Children’s Ten Point Plan Plus.
2018 National Budget Response to the Children’s Ten Point Plan Plus was allocation of $1 million for the provision of technical and vocational skills to Persons With Disabilities (PWD). The government allocated $5.7million towards the procurement of hearing aids and braille support services to learners with visual impairment. Commitment was also made to support sign language and braille teaching and learning resource materials.
The government also committed to support children with disabilities with psychological services and school feeding programmes. In terms of social security, $39.3 million was allocated towards funding existing social safety nets.
Leonard Cheshire Disability Zimbabwe held the seminar after appreciating the need to lobby for development of child sensitive fiscal and budget policies and expenditures, evidence based child budget advocacy, hold the government to account on the promises made to children, enhance the effectiveness of the national budgets in addressing the development needs of children and reprioritization of expenditure to the critical areas which are important in achieving sustainable development.
Leonard Cheshire Disability Zimbabwe is a non-profit organization striving for creation of equal opportunities for people with a disability. It has been operating in Zimbabwe since 1981 and envisions a society in which every person with a disability can enjoy their rights and have the opportunity to fulfil their potential. It also works with grassroots communities in all ten provinces of Zimbabwe and strives to address the issues of discrimination, exclusion, poverty and rights violation among people with disability (PWD) through various program strategies.
