Social inclusion and development - why we need to include everyone
If you had been told your entire life that you were incapable of doing something, you had never seen anyone else like you do it, and you had never been given the opportunity to try it - would you believe that you were able to?
In every country, individuals and groups face barriers of discrimination that make it hard - if not impossible - to access the political, economic and social opportunities in their communities. These barriers most commonly include discrimination against gender, disability, ethnicity, language, religion, sexuality, or location.
This kind of discrimination is called social exclusion and can lead to the lack or denial of resources, rights, goods and services, education, employment, or political access. All over the world, there are individuals and groups that come up against barriers that make it difficult to take part in society. For development to be sustainable, we need to work towards eliminating these barriers.
As governments and communities around the world increasingly enact legislation and programs to ensure the inclusion of all members of society, so too must the development sector.
What does social inclusion look like in development?
Social exclusion has historically been the reality for women and girls, people with disabilities, LGBTQIA+, ethnic and religious minorities in many societies, and the same has been true of the development sector. Often, development programs and projects have focused on helping one group, without realising they are harming another.
Education is one of the most fundamental ways to overcome poverty and empower people to take control of their own lives.
Good Return’s Consumer Awareness and Financial Empowerment (CAFE) initiative focuses on the empowerment of women by providing people living in poverty with low literacy skills access to financial education. The program aims to give learners the confidence, knowledge, and skills they need to make sound financial decisions and build pathways out of poverty. It is also one of the clearest examples of the need for social inclusion in development - 80% of the people who participate in CAFE training in Cambodia are women, and 10% are people living with disabilities.
Tried and tested methods for inclusive education
It is vital that development initiatives, projects, and programs are designed to be as inclusive as possible. They need to take into account the barriers that minority groups face when accessing services/opportunities and do their utmost to address them. This cannot be achieved unless development organisations are themselves inclusive - it’s hard to practice something you don’t understand yourself. For example, there are steps that can be taken to ensure people living with a disability have access to education.
Through programs like CAFE, Good Return strives to be as inclusive as possible. We have worked hard to educate our staff and the microfinance institutions we partner with on how to include people living with a disability. Many of the steps we’ve taken are simple, require very few resources, and can be easily implemented by any organisation with an interest in being more inclusive.
Examples include:
Educating our microfinance partners who deliver our programs, particularly on language and actions that are respectful and comfortable to use when talking to and about people with disabilities.
We include a session on inclusive practices when we provide training to the trainers who will be implementing our CAFE program to local community groups. This includes sessions on gender and how to include both women and men in the sessions, how to best include people with disabilities and what language and actions are respectful to use. We always ensure that the community is consulted prior to implementing our programs, to ensure everyone is aware of the training and its purpose, that an accessible location can be arranged for all, and that the training is held when the most people can attend.
We encourage a ‘buddy system’ for people with memory issues, learning difficulties, people who have trouble hearing, etc. This is where a learner may bring along a friend or family member that can provide assistance if some of the concepts are too complex for the learner to understand, or the trainer couldn’t be easily understood.
These simple measures, and others like them, can help to break down specific barriers related to one’s perceived social identity and help towards ensuring education is accessible to more and more people.
Social inclusion is more than just inviting people to a party and hoping they’ll accept the invitation. It’s an ongoing process of improving the terms by which people and groups take part in society - improving the ability, opportunity, and dignity of those who are discriminated against or simply overlooked because of their identity.
By taking simple measures, we can make development more inclusive, meaning more access to services and opportunities for marginalised groups.
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