Approaches

CBR Approach

At St. Justin Foundation (SJF), we strive to empower children and youth with disabilities by promoting their health, well-being, and participation in society through a Community-Based Rehabilitation (CBR) approach. This holistic method involves the community, ensuring that children with disabilities (CWDs) and their parents receive comprehensive support. By using field workers and a supportive committee comprised of community members, SJF fosters a sense of ownership and trust within the community. These trained field workers act as a bridge between families and service providers, conducting house-to-house visits, educating parents, offering sign language training, physiotherapy, and counseling services.

Field workers play a crucial role in identifying and rehabilitating CWDs. The house-to-house visits help overcome geographical and transport barriers, making this approach highly effective. Supportive Committees made up of religious leaders, elders, parents, and local government representatives further enhance the community’s active involvement. These committees lead community responses to protect and rehabilitate CWDs, offer advice, and help identify and refer children to essential services such as health centers and schools.

Early identification and intervention is key in ensuring CWDs develop to their full potential, supporting their physical, social, and cognitive development while reducing long-term costs and stress for families. By transferring skills like sign language and physiotherapy techniques to families, SJF empowers parents to better care for their children. Through the CBR program, SJF also addresses broader family needs, offering referrals for healthcare, psychological, educational, and livelihood support, ultimately enhancing the overall well-being of both the children and their families.

To learn more about the CBR approach, please visit the WHO CBR Guidelines .

Participatory Approach

SJF believes that everybody has a right to participate in decision-making be it at household level, in the district planning processes or using constitutional rights to participate in elections. We are aware that disabilities, cultural norms, values and practices in many communities in Tanzania do place disabilities specific constraints, which particularly limit the capacity of children and youths with disabilities to participate effectively in decision making and development processes; hence, SJF’s attention to involving children and youths with disabilities at all levels of intervention.

Community based Approach

SJF’s primary targets youth and children with disabilities for we believe we need to love each other whether we have a disability or not. This is what St. Justin Foundation tells child with disabilities to raise their morals because sometimes they feel a little bit down. Moreover, will remain the communities that we have chosen to work with. From the inception of ideas to the implementation and evaluation we ensure the beneficiaries and the communities are engaged in a meaningful way in order to ensure ownership and enhance sustainability and impact. We are committed to helping Children and youth with disabilities as well as the community members build on the resources available in order to bring about positive changes. Working with youth and children with disabilities as well as the communities means empowering people to speak out for them and in doing so SJF gives special attention to children and youth with disabilities as the key-holders to sustainable development.

Holistic Approach

SJF sees a close link between the multi-dimensional nature of disabilities, its interdependence with social injustice and violation of human dignity of people with disabilities especially children and youth with disabilities. Disabilities problems cannot be solved successfully without analyzing and addressing these links. This encompasses issues of the rights of people with disabilities (who owns and decides on the use of natural assets), equality (who in the family has decisive powers over the family’s (natural) resources) and democracy (how can people participate in decision-making that influences their livelihoods and their environment). A focus on human rights when promoting the rights of children with disabilities gives a people-centred focus that also helps in mitigating conflicts of interest and enhances the sustainability of interventions.