Catalog

Reaching Out, Moving Up
ADB Review [ January - February 2004 ]

The Active Women’s Group brings women with disabilities together, provides information on training and jobs, and raises their profile in Cambodia

By David Kruger (dkruger@adb.org)
External Relations Specialist

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Heng Rasmey knows how it feels to be discriminated against. After completing a university degree in literature in the late 1990s, she applied to a teachers’ college, only to be rejected based on her disability.

“I was very depressed,” says Ms. Rasmey, who has been disabled since she contracted polio as a child.

But she was not defeated. She contacted the Cambodian Disabled People’s Organization (CDPO) for help and eventually worked with five other disabled people to convince the teachers’ college to let them attend. After graduation and 5 months as a teacher, she was drawn back to CDPO where she worked to help other people with disabilities—particularly women—win fairer treatment and take advantage of a growing number of opportunities. As facilitator of the CDPO’s Active Women’s Group, Ms. Rasmey works with other disabled women to identify the needs of their peers and broaden their experience.

She says the group determined “the most important issue is the lack of networking among disabled women, among disabled women and other women, and among disabled women and the rest of society.”

With encouragement and a grant from the Asian Development Bank, the Active Women’s Group has spent the past few years bringing women together, providing information on training and job opportunities, counseling the disabled and their families, and raising the profile of disabled women in Cambodia.

“Through our work, we made contact with over 40 organizations,” says Ms. Rasmey. “This is very important for us.”

“When disabled women come to see us looking for help, they are often hopeless,” she says. “But after they come to meet our group, they see that disabled women can work— and they gain hope.”

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