ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - For foreign visitors, this African city - named "New Flower" in Amharic - is a gateway to Ethiopia's fascinating nature and history. Yet day-to-day existence for some of its residents involves urban problems which are repeated across this vast continent.
Many of the residents live in sprawling, informal settlements known as Erri Be Kentu ("To Cry For No Help"). These shantytowns are riven by a maze of narrow streets and shacks with no running water or electricity. Essential services are desperately lacking, and some 24 per cent of the city's 3 million residents are without indoor sanitary facilities.
Municipal authorities say outsourcing the management of such public services could solve this problem. But in a country where the economy is recovering from over ten years of war and famine, finding an entrepreneur willing to invest in such a business wasn't easy. That is, until a group of people with disabilities, who are part of an ILO training and business development initiative, decided to accept the challenge - and, at the same time, find a way to create decent jobs.
"Working cleaning toilets means a lot to us. It is not only a matter of money, it is a matter of exercising life," says Shitaye Astawes, a member of the Ethiopian Federation of Persons with Disabilities (EFPD). The Federation is an umbrella organization for five associations of persons with different disabilities, now working to provide better sanitary infrastructure in Addis Ababa.
The Federation put into practice techniques learned in the "Start and Improve Your Business" training provided by ILO experts. It sees the project as a unique opportunity to provide jobs for its members.
Their efforts bore results with their selection for a hotly contested grant from the World Bank. The ILO Disability Programme encouraged the Federation to enter the World Bank Development Competition because the theme for 2003, "Making Services Work for Poor People", matched the EFPD's business plan for Addis Ababa.
Since 1998, the World Bank has organized a global competition for innovative development ideas, known as Development Marketplace (DM), every 18 to 24 months. A jury of peers from the development community evaluates the proposals and the winners receive start-up funds to implement the projects in a one-year timeframe. Roughly US$5 million in grants were available for the most innovative projects submitted in 2003.
The EFPD proposal not only provides sanitary services, but meets an urgent need to create decent job opportunities for women and men with disabilities, who are among the poorest of the poor. The project will create decent job opportunities for 250 workers. For people with disabilities, a secure income is only the first visible gain. A more sustainable result is the ability to participate in everyday life so they may be seen just as others are.
In July 2003, the World Bank notified the Federation that its proposal had been selected from among 168 finalists out of the 2,700 submissions, and EFPD representatives were invited to World Bank headquarters in Washington to defend their project. The EFPD and its ILO partners spent four months finalizing the proposal and preparing Federation representatives to defend it at World Bank headquarters in Washington. The US$200,000 grant is the largest ever received by an Ethiopian NGO as a result of a World Bank competition.