Living Proof: The Right to Live in the Community (Excerpts)
By: WITNESS Media Archive
Posted: Jul 5 07
Witnessed: 12032 times
Regions: Croatia
Issues: Mental disability rights
Tags: croatia, disability, discrimination
WITNESS Partner: Association for Promoting Inclusion (API)
Living Proof provides a voice for members of society who are all too often ignored. Stigma and discrimination perpetuate a social welfare system that keeps people with intellectual disabilities from realizing their fundamental right to live independently. By describing the experiences and presenting opinions of people with intellectual disabilities, this film demonstrates the importance of achieving change in the social welfare system and in society as a whole. "Everyone should leave the institutions and be in apartments the way I am. …they would be better off, like me. They would have their own lives," said Ivka Krzelj, one of the people interviewed in Living Proof. In Croatia, however, one in three people with moderate or severe intellectual disabilities lives in a long stay institution, isolated from society.
The film was shot by members of the Association for Promoting Inclusion (API) in Zagreb, which since 1997, has provided community-based programs as alternatives to institutionalization, empowering people with intellectual disabilities to realize their rights and participate as equal citizens in society. Living Proof will premiere in Croatia on December 8th, 2005 at the opening of a conference on the right to live in the community organized by API.
In the coming months, Living Proof will be screened in Croatia as well as in other countries of Central and Eastern Europe as a part of an advocacy campaign to promote the rights of people with intellectual disabilities to live independent, self-fulfilling lives. It will be targeted toward key audiences (such as policy makers, social welfare and health care professionals, and civil society organizations), to raise awareness about the rights of people with intellectual disabilities and mobilize public support for concrete, far-reaching policies and programs that promote social inclusion.
The video is available in Croatian and English.
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