Carla Luis and the work of LARDEF
[Source: DDP and Ann Peterken, September 2007]
Disability and Development Partners (DDP), a UK registered charity, works in partnership with the Angolan NGO Liga de Apoio a Integração dos Deficientes (LARDEF) – League to Support the Integration of the Disabled - tackling the social exclusion and poverty that affect an estimated 1.2 million disabled people in post-conflict Angola.
Besides actively campaigning for the inclusion of disabled people at all levels of society in Angola and fighting for their human rights, LARDEF’s programmes involve creating awareness and mobilising disabled people to demand their rights, fighting poverty through income generating programmes for disabled people and mainstreaming disability.
Carla Luis, LARDEF’s National Co-ordinator is a double amputee as a result of the civil war that lasted 27 years in Angola. Undaunted, this inspiring woman has led successful poverty reduction programmes for disabled people among the war displaced populations in Angola. She now leads LARDEF’s new disabled women, youth and children programme, tackling the discrimination and human rights issues faced by this group in Angola.
She is a true example of courage, willpower and determination - qualities which helped her succeed in higher education in a country where disabled people face serious barriers to education, which is one of the issues government ministers and LARDEF are working together to solve.
Physical impairment has not prevented Carla from working with remote communities in the provinces of Benguela, Moxico and Huambo where LARDEF is currently implementing programmes with DDP support.
Although LARDEF programmes only operate in three of Angola’s eighteen provinces, their advocacy work at a national level benefits disabled people throughout Angola.
