Why are so many disabled people poor? Why are so many poor people disabled? For decades these two questions have been posed by the international disability movement.

The Disability Knowledge and Research programme (Disability KaR) sought to examine the issue of disability and poverty, and supported opportunities for disabled people’s organisations to research issues on mainstreaming disability in development.

The main objectives of the programme were to:

• Generate research on international disability issues to influence policy and practice
• Improve access to knowledge and information
• Promote discussion between disabled people, service providers, researchers, and policy makers
• Develop and support sustainable technologies to combat the effects of disability

Mark Harrison, the Disability KaR Programme Director said of the programme: "The challenge has been to connect the practise of the programe to the principles of human rights and disability equality. This has meant we have worked to open up the programme activities to disabled people from the South and the North in a new way. To begin this process the policy project consulted members of the disability movement from Europe, Africa and Asia on the agenda for research. This engagement was deepened at the Malawi roundtable, where participants articulated a clear research agenda and principles for how disability research should be carried out.

"It was this agenda that informed the commissioning of research in the policy project, the thematic research projects and the research prospectus. This process has produced an exciting set of collaborations between disabled researchers from across the globe. Based on the principles of emancipatory research, this work has produced a number of valuable insightful reports.

"By collaborating with researchers in developing countries, many of whom are active in the disability and development movement, the programme aims to provide a realistic representation of where disability and development is at the present time, examine the opportunities that exist for disabled people to become engaged with the development process, and to positively influence DFID’s overall research goals."

To ensure the effectivenss of the programme the Disability KaR team used a wide range of approaches in order to bring together knowledge and research on international disability issues. The different areas of the programme were:

1. Disability research projects, this included seven research projects focusing on the theme of Mainstreaming Disability in Development, as well as a study looking at how disabled people can be included in poverty reduction.
2. DFID policy project, this saw the placement of a disability policy officer within DFID and a serices of studies to review and analyse the evidence of links between disability and poverty
3. Disability equality training, run by the Overseas Development Group at the University of East Anglia
4. Knowledge and communication strategy, including a number of publications and online communication tools and face-to-face events to encourage dialogue between different stakeholders in the North and South
5. Six competition projects, which aimed to develop and support sustainable technologies that combat the effects of disability and poverty

Click on the links above or use the left hand menu to find out more about the different programme areas.