Budget

Mainstreaming disability into the financial planning and implementation of emergency response should be done from the very beginning.

As you may not have all the results of your initial assessment, especially disaggregated data on disability, you may build a first response project with a flexible budget with the expectation that your team will later identify people who were missed in the initial assessment. You can always estimate that around 15% of the population would have some kind of disability.

With this in mind, build as much flexibility as possible into funding proposals and budgets. Building in accessibility, adaptation mechanisms, technical support (from specialised-disability organisations for instance), and reasonable accommodation costs into your budget will be less costly than incorporating this at a later stage during implementation.

One suggestion to allow for flexibility in implementation is to include a budget line in your proposal. for 'accessibility and reasonable accommodation, which can be justified by ensuring  support for everyone to access relief and aid It could allow the deployment of certain activities within your mainstream humanitarian project, such as:  

• Supporting persons that face barriers and difficulties to travel to and access humanitarian services (schools, collective centres, health facilities, registration and distribution points, ageing and disability focal points, cash transfer points etc.);
• Additional items or adaptations to ensure access could be for example additional provision of:
  • non-food items such as clothing, blankets,
  • food items,
  • specific medication,
  • additional cash or vouchers,
  • referrals to other sources of support.
• To purchase assistive devices, learning aids and develop or purchase communication materials (in different languages and Braille), where appropriate;
• To support the costs of personal assistant and / or caregiver.