On January 1, I started the campaign “Inclusive21C” to ensure people with disability find quality and dignity in the way they are accommodated in various social/official spaces.

As someone who has studied and observed inclusion being implemented in many organisations, I can tell you that intention is never the issue here. Leaders, managers, HR professionals and everyone concerned intend well in implementing inclusive ideas, but suitable approach is another thing.

Even today, if you visit corporate houses or government agencies that claim to implement inclusive policies, you see that giving jobs is considered more a favour to the person with disability or to meet legal compliances. Almost no one has put in place a system to get quality participation from a disabled employee in both work and fun activities. They don’t link their tech support or systems team to understand assistive devices, which could be done with some basic awareness training. Also, there’re (inexpensive) ways co-workers could be taught on how to accommodate the disabled worker without letting the person’s disability come in the way.

In short, no one has an elaborate thought process. And as a result, inclusion is stuck in the same CSR narrative with neither the disability community nor businesses/employers finding actual benefit.

So, if you ask me why inclusion hasn’t caught the imagination of many like wildfire, as it should, I’d say the following:

Lack of opportunity for people with disability to discover themselves and express their hidden strengths.

No matter which country they belong, people with disability find fewer opportunities to monetize their skills. In countries like India, the idea that they have no choice but to work for corporates has been deeply embedded in their heads for a long time. As a result, few could sport wings and get entrepreneurial. I mean, they don’t realise the real joy of being free and earn for themselves.

Even in developed countries, where social security could cover their basic needs, people with disability find little or no training to discover their skills. I’ve been on several creator programmes and I see absolutely no participation from disability community, which, in my opinion, has tons of knowledge and personal experience that could be converted into valuable coaching programmes. More about this in a minute…

Without sufficiently empowered to discover their true value, people with disability have been reduced to be mere dependents on menial jobs or government doles. This has also made inclusion look like a kind of dead-weight obligation the corporate houses, governments and charities are made to grudgingly carry. Small wonder that they get discouraged and do such a shoddy job of implementing inclusion.

Ok, is it only doom and gloom?

Certainly not.

If we think through the issues, we’ll find the answer staring at our faces all along. It’s so obvious that even a blind man like me can see. 🙂

Have you heard of self-discovery journey? Have you ever been through one yourself? And if you’ve done it, have you ever realized that self-discovery journey often leads to spotting hidden skills we barely knew we possess?

Imagine putting a person with disability on a self-discovery journey by helping them process the churning inner emotions, label them and turn them into tools that’d serve them? Can you even guess what they’d come out with if they go through the process? And imagine how many lives they can touch and how easily they gain acceptance and…yes, feel included?

If you’re skeptical about this idea, let me say this:

I came across a coach in my creator community who sells an ebook on practicing compassion and empathy. I wasn’t sure if compassion and empathy are precise skills whose exact practice or application could be quantified. Yet, right kind of coaching, daily meditation or mindfulness exercises with doses of positive affirmations can make the person feel she’s going somewhere with her goal of being compassionate and empathetic.

If someone could be coached on compassion, why not they be coached on things like ‘how to excel when constantly challenged’, ‘how to overturn negative self-image into a positive one?’, ‘how to be a caregiver?’

Self-discovery is a journey every human being embarks on. We usually find a person getting out of a traumatic event such as a broken marriage, loss or disability of a loved one or suffering a disability or serious illness. Getting down on the path of inner cleansing through meditation, mindfulness, affirmation etc, we can process and quantify our feelings, learn to focus on positive things about us and, eventually, consolidate things we learn from our experiences. All of these will help understand if there’s a knowledge or a skill we could impart to others.

If you ask me, I’d say that my experience as an advocate of retinal conditions, blindness, peer counselling, deploying writing to turn trauma into a valuable life experience etc have solidified into skills at different points in my life and allowed me to touch several hearts and minds.

Now, all that someone like me would need is knowledge and support system that would help me turn my expertise into concrete, result-oriented coaching programme.

If it works for me, it should work for several people with or without disability. Right? With a proper knowledge base and support system, of course. That’s exactly what I’m creating through my Inclusive21C campaign.

People with disability need an airbridge to enter the world of self-discovery, something we can create joining with them. This in turn would allow our own journeys of self-discovery.

Are you excited? Join the Inclusive21C Facebook community (https://www.facebook.com/groups/262978489266007) and in the expedition to findout our strengths, our successes and the keys to freedom. The tools to change our lives is within. Every human being is free to discover them and unlock their true potential. We enrich each other by doing this together.