 We'll open with a brief statement by Deputy Chief of Mission Data Graph. Good morning to our friends in Washington from Kinshasa. Hello and welcome. I'd like to thank you all for coming here in Kinshasa in Washington to participate in this very important program. I have to my left a senior official from the University of Kinshasa, Joaquin, and the representatives of disability organizations here in Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as Kelfing, which is a foundation created by alumni of our Congo American Language Institute. We have the good fortune today to host a discussion with Judith Kuhman, the Department of State Special Advisor on Disability Rights on the important issue of education for people with disabilities. Kuhman is an example of true success in human rights advocacy. She began her career as a school teacher and placed down discriminatory regulations to obtain her teaching license. She founded the organization Disabled in Action to fight for the rights of people with disabilities under civil rights law. She worked as a legislative assistant to help develop the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which is a 1975 act that required the U.S. education system to actively include people with disabilities and provide appropriate accommodation. She tirelessly lobbied the U.S. government to pass American with Disabilities Act in 1990, a law to protect the civil rights of people with disabilities. She has served as Assistant Secretary for Special Education and Rehabilitation Services in the Department of Education, as well as a World Bank Group Advisor on Disability and Development, and since 2010 has served as our foreign ministers, our State Department's Special Advisor of Disability Rights. And this is only a partial list of incredible professional achievements. The existence of the Office of the Special Advisor on Disability Rights is the importance of the U.S. government, the U.S. government places on this issue. Ensuring the ability of people with disabilities to participate in society is a human rights issue. Human rights need to be advocated for, both by passing laws that ensure rights and by continuously examining and proving how rights are put into practice. To build a just and successful society, we need to ensure that all people, including people with disabilities, are able to participate in education, employment opportunities, and all aspects of society. Thank you all again and enjoy the program. The official from the Ministry of Education is now going to give a brief word. She's going to have translations with the assistance of one of the California members. Okay, she's the Director of Special Education at the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education. Okay, the position was created in 1992 as a result of the conference on the rights of children with disabilities. Okay, her responsibility is to organize the education for children with disabilities, and she says they work with four types of disabilities. They work with children with physical disabilities, auditory disabilities, visual disabilities, and mental disabilities. Right, the goal is to not merely organize an education but also to establish the children's integration in social life and future professional life. Okay, and they work to coordinate administrative and educational activities. They also organize training on special education. And the Minister is planning and assisting to integrate children with disabilities and debate the teachers who are teaching in front of the community. Okay, there's 169 schools in the Congo with three schools, 38 kindergartens, 90 primary schools, and 49 secondary schools. Okay, they have the secondary schools in terms of the short cycle, the long cycle, and they have four training centers, four teacher training centers. Right, children with disabilities are taught using the national curriculum. They're not taught with the separate curriculum because they want to give them equivalent education to children with disabilities. Right, for children with disabilities they integrate certain special features and accommodations such as the use of sign language for deaf children and the use of braille for blind children. They do not have a standardized curriculum for children with mental disabilities. What they do is the children get individual assessments and the curriculum is adapted based on the needs and behavior of the child. Okay, the government steps on this. They have specific schools recognized by the government with teachers paid to provide education for children with disabilities and they have in their law articles 102 and 108 that are addressing the issue of education for children with disabilities. Okay, the government, due to the limited number of schools available specifically for children with disabilities, knows that a number of children have been left at home and they're working to address that through awareness raising with parents on the importance of education and through increased use of inclusive education so that children with disabilities are integrated into other existing schools. Right, they're working with Handicap International on 10 schools in Kinshasa to provide integrated education and they're working on the construction of accessibility features in the schools such as ramps, accessible restrooms and laptops that can be used at different heights so they're available for people with various disabilities. Okay, they're educating children with disabilities on the national curriculum so that they can participate in the national exam with all other children at the primary and secondary levels. Right, they do provide the national exam in Braille and for deaf children they do have sign language interpreters accompany them during the exam. Congo has not yet ratified the UN treaty on the rights of children with disabilities however they're progressing towards that. Okay, they currently have 5,315 children with disabilities receiving an education which is considerably below what it needs to be. So the Ministry of Education has a vision of constructing an increasing number of schools to accommodate all children with disabilities and training teachers who are capable of providing special education for all children with disabilities. Thank you and now we will have a brief word from USAID. Hello. Okay, so my name is Julie Palumbo and I'm the Education Program Advisor at USAID. We're also joined by Zoe Bressler who is our Deputy Director. So thank you to our friends in Washington for joining us. I'm sure the lovely day in BC thank you to the Minister for coming and our embassy partners for organizing today. So I just wanted to highlight a few of our projects that USAID does in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. People with disabilities are served through many of our projects be it health education and they're incorporated in a lot of our enlisting projects. So a few examples include and we also wanted to thank the some of our partners, Handicraft International, Caltech, the NGO partners who are in the room. So one of those projects is a team Congo and that's funded by the Lakeview Board that funds fun. So that enables people with disabilities to attain independence to fully participate in all aspects of life specifically women and girls. And one of the example of that project is a community-based brawl instruction program. One of our largest projects in education is ACCELER and so currently in Congo they are providing small grants to NGOs to do construction projects in schools to make schools more accessible for people with physical disabilities. We also have accelerated learning programs for out-of-school youth and so children and youth with disabilities are served through that program as well. We have a voter and civic education project called Congo democracy and so that program reaches out to marginalized groups to ensure that they're included in the electoral process and so that also includes people with disabilities. And then finally one of our largest health projects is the integrated health project plus and so that's a health care system strengthening project and so a really interesting component of that project is a part of improving the quality of health care includes accessibility. So part of the way that they make clinics more accessible to people is specifically targeted for people with disabilities to ensure that they have a minimize wait time. So if you have you know a few people waiting if all of the health needs are equal they'll serve the person that has the physical disability so they're not required to wait quite as long. So that is just a quick overview of some of the ways that USA works to serve people with disabilities. Thank you. Okay thank you. Can I you stay on camera Julie? Julie? Yeah just stay there. Okay who's next? I believe at this point we had scheduled a special advisor for you to speak. Is Rosalie gonna say anything for Kalfi? Yes sir. Of course. My apologies. Hello everyone. My name is Rosalie Kinimu. I'm founder and president of Kalfi. Kalfi stands for Kali Ladies Foundation for Excellence. I'm Kali student of course level 6. I'm not alone here I have my team with me. We started this year since June. We gathered, we set some aims, some proposals such as women empowerment, improvement of skills and education especially of girls and children with disabilities. So since June this year we decided on a target of 25 children to be sent to school. We must send 25 children to school. So we started raising funds first of all at Kali by Kali student from Kali student and me. We're using some drugs to work with our local with a message around and the lead does roughly start with the sleep. We put it in each class of Kali. We synthesized Kali students so they were dropping some money in. This is our first way of raising funds. We also wrote some fair palettes, kind of enhancement letters. We gave to children, friends, colleagues, relatives, anyone who could help. So they were contributing to us. We also added our own contribution. They were contributing $10 a month each. So these first contributions allowed us to give scholarship to 25 children. But they are now 26 because we add the one form we found at Shaoma school submitted by the Kali director. Well actually our target was only where us and girls to send to school. When we went in suburbs in very remote location to select those children, those girls, we realized that not only girls were in bad situation, but we also found some children, boys and girls with disabilities. They were neglected. No one was caring about them. They couldn't go to school. First of all, their own parents said, well you have a disability, you are useless. We don't need to send you to school. So stay home, stay there. We don't care about you. So we couldn't leave those children like that. And then we took over all of them. We even gave priority to those children with disabilities because now we have 14 children with disabilities and 12 normal girls. So we registered them. We also paid all classroom equipment. We organized a barbecue to support our children. Now they are just waiting for the feed because our class here starts on feed. So they start going to school. All the equipment and the first semester fishing already paid. Now we still continue raising funds to support all the entire 2016 and 2017 school year. So here where we are, not only supporting them going to school, but we are also thinking how can we advocate so they can be defended in justice or they have easy access to education and in profession because most of them they don't have the rights. They are kind of people put away, put aside. Most of people, even their parents, they think that they don't have the same right like normal people. This is what we are doing. As part of our mandate, we have two of them. Even they are male, but we have them here. I think they will have to say something themselves. This one is what we are doing. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Jessica, could we ask a question of you about how many people are in the room because we can only see a few people? Let me do a quick count. I'm just an estimate. Well bonjour. I'm really sorry. My French is terrible. So what I'd like to do also is very briefly introduce the two people at the table and they can each give you a sentence or two about who they are. Hi, I'm Koli Bannick. I'm with USAID Washington, Africa Bureau of Education and I support our mission in DRC for education in the program. Hi, I'm Josh Joseph. I am with E3, which is Economic Growth, Education, and Environment, the Office of Education. I'm a disability specialist and it is a pleasure to meet you. So I want to thank Jessica and Zoe and Julie and Calte and the Ministry of Education and CBM and HI and all of you who have really worked hard on getting me some basic information so I have a little bit more knowledge about what is going on in the country and originally this was going to be a smaller call but I felt it would be valuable if we could bring a larger group of people together who are working on education assuming that not everybody knows what everybody else is doing. I would like very much to thank the Ministry of Education for your comments. I think in the review of materials that I've been doing it's very clear that the DRC has integrated in its constitution and policy disability so that education and employment and other issues are something that you can very readily read about. Like in the United States years ago we may have had laws on the books but it took many years for those laws to be effectively implemented. From my perspective one of the intended outcomes of today's discussion is also to look at what more we can be doing to help support civil society and government to truly help advance opportunities in the area of education but also employment and I think equally important to be able to look at ways of reducing stigma that exists in countries all around the world which frequently make people fearful of those of us who have disabilities and subsequently makes it additionally difficult to work on issues like inclusion of disabled children. I was asked to give you a little bit of information about my background so let me do that. I'm probably one of the oldest people in the room I'm 68 and a half years old so I was born in 1947 and if I could see all your faces I would ask how many of you were born in 1947 but I won't do that. But I need to paint a picture of what the United States was like at that time. So in 1947 we had no laws federal laws that were dealing with issues such as education for disabled children, education of adults with disabilities. We had no standards on the built environment meaning a building could be built had steps no ramp no bathrooms that were accessible and all of that was completely legal because we had no laws at that time that said that was illegal and so really the first 20 years of my life was spent on trying to navigate in the United States with my friends and colleagues not only looking at what we needed to do to remove barriers but actually having to learn more about what we needed to do to affect the development of legislation and the implementation of legislation. So in the United States I was living in Brooklyn New York which is a part of New York State New York City and there were four million people that live in Brooklyn New York very big but at that time as I said because there were no laws when my mother took me to school the principal said that I could not go to that school because I was in a wheelchair so there was nothing that could be done at that point my parents were immigrants they were German Jews and so you know they were my father had been in the military in the Second World War so you know I was the first of three children and when I had polio they really didn't know what to do there were no parents support groups they didn't know other people who had disabilities my mother and father of course knew about President Roosevelt who was a very important president in the United States he also had had polio but they were very confused about what to do and our Ministry of Education at that time sent a teacher to my parents house where I was living for a total of two and a half hours a week two and a half hours a week now my brothers when they started going to school they were going to school six and a half hours a day so I was receiving less education in a week than my brothers were receiving in one day so my mother my mother and father you know basically realized that they were going to have to learn to fight for my rights and that I think is very important and the ministry has mentioned the issue of families Calpe has an USAID and I know that H.I. and CBM and the disability rights organizations in the room all understand the important role that parents with disability parents who have children with disabilities must play I think stigma in many cases really makes it more difficult for families to advocate because of fear that something might happen but I believe role of parents is critical not just for the disabled children but for their children overall so my parents became advocates but I did not finally start going to school until I was nine years old and then I did not go to integrated classrooms I was in a school and all the children in my class had disabilities and there was no expectation in the 1950s that we would go to high school um and my mother actually found out that if you were a student who used a wheelchair high schools in New York City were not accessible so if you were in a wheelchair and couldn't walk up steps you were expected to go back to your home and get for home instruction so my mother started organizing with other parents meeting with the ministry of education in New York City and really demanding that they make schools accessible so as a result of my mother's advocacy and many other mothers and fathers advocacy in New York the ministry of education made a selected number of schools accessible provided some support in the school to help students like myself who needed help going to the bathroom and also provided basic transportation because the schools were not in our neighborhoods they were further away so that was very beneficial because there was another group of people like myself who finally were able to go to school to high school um I decided I wanted to be a teacher and to make a long story short um I went to university I was told not to tell anybody that I wanted to be a teacher because if I did I wouldn't get support from the ministry that was helping pay my tuition so I majored in speech therapy and I studied what we call a minor in education and I took all the appropriate courses but when it was time for me to get my license I had to take three examinations a written exam which I passed an oral exam which I passed and a medical exam that I failed I failed because I couldn't walk that was a very tough time I would say because I had to make a decision about whether I was going to uh do something about my discrimination again we had no laws in the early 70s that made it illegal to discriminate against someone who was qualified for a job so I was very lucky I was able to get a couple of attorneys for free and we went to court using our constitution and the judge that we had basically directed the board of education to give me another medical exam which they did with another doctor and then I was given my license but then I had a great deal of difficulty getting a job in a school either because the schools were not accessible or because there was discrimination going on but I was able to get a job and I did teach in elementary school for three years before I went back to graduate school and then moved on to do broader advocacy but for all of you in the room who are working as advocates whether you're from civil society or ministries or U.S. government agencies or other foreign embassies that are working in this area I think we have a strong responsibility to very publicly talk about the importance of education for all children because I think this is the critical issue all children need to be educated and we need to get the advocates who are fighting for education for all children to be inclusive of writing for the rights of disabled children to get an education and I think Cal Fee what I was very intrigued about with the organization is that in fact work that it was starting to do had nothing to do with disabled children but as we were hearing from Rosalie when the members of Cal Fee or the alumni were in the community they saw that disabled children were not receiving education and I think that model is a very important one that you can all be discussing I think we all clearly understand that when people do not have an education they are not going to be able to make contributions to support themselves or their family and equally importantly they cannot become a part of the change that needs to go on in your country and in our country and in countries around the world we need a population of people who are educated or knowledgeable and who can make contributions and where we have an expectation that most people can in fact make contributions to our community so let me end on that and there were three questions that I received and if I could quickly go up with those questions and then I think we can open this up for some discussion this question was how do I work to promote the rights of people in the United States I think what we're doing in the United States and what you're doing is probably very similar we may have more years of working on this but basically what I believe is it's very important not to do things alone I believe it's important for us to work in coalition with disability organizations representing people with intellectual disabilities visual disabilities auditory disabilities physical disabilities and to have psychosocial disabilities invisible disabilities like HIV and diabetes and epilepsy on and on because the likelihood for people with various disabilities to be experiencing discrimination is still very high I believe you've ratified the CRPD and I think that's very important and the ability to work in coalition is important and that's really the work that we've been doing in the United States now for decades it's working together it's I think one of the most important things that we've been doing is moving away from identifying problems to coming up with solutions and solutions that we can get consensus from a broad group of people so when looking at the issue of education you know in the United States when we had our first major law on education for disabled children in 1975 at that point the government's official figures for disabled children out of school was one million so the government in 1975 in the United States of America acknowledged that one million children were not in school and it wasn't just that acknowledgement it didn't just require that students be identified and be put in a classroom but as the minister was saying need to be able to understand the kinds of supports that some of these students would need that teacher training which was also mentioned is critically important and I would like to say in the area of teacher training I also think that it's very important that we're not just looking at training of teachers in special education but that we're looking at all teachers receiving some training so that they can effectively work with students who have various forms of disabilities we need to look at ways that in discussing the issue of inclusive education you need to allow people to see that inclusive education does not just benefit students with disabilities in the United States we have a lot of data that's been collected for a number of decades now which is absolutely showing that the inclusion of disabled children when done appropriately with appropriate supports not only improves the learning for those disabled students but also improves the learning for all students the minister I think mentioned the issue of construction of schools and renovations of schools around the world we see that when schools primary secondary universities are built excessively it not only benefits disabled students but it benefits non-disabled students young girls who may stop going to school if there are not bathrooms or appropriate bathrooms when they get their menses ways of ensuring safety and getting from one's home to school these are common issues not just for students with disabilities so when we talk about inclusive education I think we need to be looking at the entire system and we need to ensure that there is a priority that all new schools will be built excessively at existing schools where possible renovations occur working at the community level as you are more where parents can be reaching out to other parents and adults with disabilities can be reaching out to parents who have younger disabled children getting the leadership in the local communities the villages the townships etc to really understand the problem and to get them to be a part of the solution so that they are also helping identify children that are out of school and taking responsibility to help get those children in school if you want to say anything I can mention briefly about what US aid is doing in relation to education and inclusive education we're currently working on developing policy and guidelines on how to proceed with inclusive education in various countries around the world I want to share some exciting news as well from Morocco and from Malawi those two countries have both been developing early childhood reading assessments for blind and deaf children and that's going to be a program that's fed into their national reading program they're also working regionally on on training education officers education officers regarding what inclusive education means and what what all that entails yeah and I visited two schools right I went to two schools sorry I first got my bachelor's degree from California State University Northridge so the university that you went to in California that was a regular university and you got supports to be able to as a deaf student put a class and you were able to graduate yes yeah I was it it's a university that has about 35 000 students and roughly 200 of those students are deaf and so they provide interpreting services or roughly 100 they have roughly 150 interpreters for the 200 deaf students who attend so the classes are fully accessible to all and secondly I went back to school and got my master's degree from Gallaudet University which is the only university that's fully accessible for deaf and hard of hearing students in the in the world so those are two different experiences here in the United States it just kind of highlights the various options that students who are deaf have for going to university I think this is an important point because it relates back to laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act which some of you may have heard about and I think we're going to send you some links so that you can go and read some of those laws basically laws that we've seen in the US are intended to remove barriers so that in the area of education including higher education individuals with various forms of disabilities can attend those universities we've seen over the years an increasing number of students with various forms of disabilities attending our universities and graduating that has also resulted in the ability for more disabled people to be able to get jobs within the federal government in the United States so President Obama has had what we call an executive order now about 12 percent of the federal workforce are individuals with various forms of disabilities so you can see the link to education to employment the next question that was asked is does the US have a strategic policy to promote durable employment for the disabled in countries like the DRC so what we have is the ability to share information on what US laws exist in the area of employment so that disabled people's organizations and civil society and ministries and the employer community etc can look at our laws and consider using parts of those laws part of those laws I think if you look at the Americans with Disabilities Act you will see that title one the first part of the law specifically relates to employment and it's not that long and will give you a link that will also allow you to see commonly asked questions there's also in the area of employment a number of different ways that government provides supports for people to be able to work one is a technical assistance center that you can link to it's called the job accommodations network it's about 20 years old and well I understand it's for the US the kinds of questions that people ask I'm sure are very similar to the kinds of questions people ask in your country around employment of disabled people because much of the discussion in employment is a belief that disabled people cannot work or a belief that disabled people would be a lot of money for an employer to hire um the kinds of information they have the types of questions and answers I think can really help dispel those issues one of the thing I want to say about employment focusing on education in the US law we have over the last 20 years but a focus on something that we call transition so when students are going to be leaving primary or secondary school here it would be secondary school before university beginning to have discussions on what kind of work or education that student is interested in we look at ways of helping students while in school get internships possibly in government agencies or with the private sector or just different opportunities where they can be exposed to work and we emphasize at an earlier and earlier age that we expect non-disabled people to work and we expect disabled people to work and that as a community we need to help support that so I understand that there are big differences between our countries but what I think is very important and what I have been very encouraged about in this discussion today is that you have in your constitution and in your ministry of education and other places language which is good language which is aspirational showing what the government and society wants to achieve and that I think is something the US government is very committed to working with you on to help make progress in this direction and then the last question is how can disabled people be helped to integrate into societies where they live so I think we could spend a couple of minutes with that question with those of you at the table because I think I've been talking a little bit I'll give you one more example but I think it would be interesting to hear about what you're doing to help remove barriers for disabled people to become integrated here one thing that's very important is strong laws where government agencies have responsibility for implementing those laws it's the ability in the in the United States when something is not done correctly or when an individual believes something has not been done correctly that they can file a complaint or they can go to court they can file a complaint with the ministry that has responsibility for implementation of that law as these laws have been in place now 30 40 years depending on the law and as we've seen barriers being removed those barriers being removed allow people with all forms of disabilities to be able to become more integrated into everyday life and that's really what we're needing to do I mentioned earlier the issue of working with the leadership in the most rural communities up to the national level because we need to be working with those authority figures in civil society in the religious community in the government with our disabled people's organizations have open discussions which make it clear that our objective is inclusion and then to really set goals about what we wish to achieve and I know many of you around the table are doing a lot of work in this area so I'm wondering if anybody would like to give some examples of what you are doing to help integrate disabled people into society if you hear me okay um I can say something well most of uh country members we don't really have one disability but we found one lady at Cali she graduated last session she even made a speech in front of everyone so we called her she's the man as she's the blind but she's clever she's starting at Cali now she's taking proper class I asked her why are you taking proper class she told me she's taking proper class to take the proper test and she would like to go and study at university in the United States so she will come back and help other disability people are the blind people like her she has some skills like um computing of blind people she knows how to type a computer for blind people she will she was training other people on computing of blind people she was also teaching at the blind about how to write if it means I don't know what it called I'm sorry so she's there she can say something herself if you know Jessica is she there would you like to say something yes to Mrs. June if she's there look at there don't look at me right she's facing the opposite so I think you're not really on camera so you can just speak hello I'm a blind as I can hear we can hear I'm a blind as Miss Rosette I finish all level at Cali now I'm preparing my two first list has has she said I need a computer who has a speaker and quality job the job choice now and other things because I need to travel for continuing my narrative in the US and then if I have to talk with you and in front of my friends who are here I think all things in Miss Rosette told you I have I don't have anything to add thank you very much I'm wondering if someone from CBM or H.I. or USAID or other DPOs would like to give examples of what you're doing now from the community disability organization would like to share great thank you and nice to meet you my name is Bakituala I'm a disabled I'm a disabled in the society that's the word the word 80s yes 86 he was trained by Stan Belgium last time years ago years ago where he was living there weren't really good I can say they were not really trained with equipment he was using for helping other disabled people so he couldn't continue to be 20 yeah he worked in a new city there where he was living after four years I was paid by the government but after four years the where he was waiting in an hospital he was paid but then they stopped so he left he couldn't wait without any he couldn't stay like that doing nothing for other people with a disability so he started working locally by doing some equipment for other people with a disability we have an example here can you cut I don't know if you can get this on camera yeah right he did it locally by hand yes he's kind of the mantra this is what he's doing to help other disabled people yes you have to make some crutches or whatever some pictures may be better for you can you explain can you explain what it is prosthetic oh handmade prosthetic it's right is it a braille no trezor it has one leg shorter than the other and I got it braille yeah he says if you have to see his workshop they're ready with he's missing equipment I can say we went with Jessica Jessica so what he's managing to do to help other disabled children I think he can say something to money right he has done a truly impressive amount of work in providing necessary mobility aids for people with disabilities in his neighborhood using very limited equipment and has additionally provided ongoing educational support and access professional training for many children with disabilities in his neighborhood I want to thank you for the work that you're doing and I think it's a great example of making local change that helps to not only improve the life of the individual person who has a disability but I think also then has a positive impact on the community who now can see disabled people as being productive contributory members so thank you yeah most of people with disabilities are living in the very remote location yeah so they are kind of neglected from very poor families so they don't have possibility to care or to take care of their especially education amazing not only equipment or prosthetics, he was also playing in the therapy. That's the way. Physical therapy. Yeah, therapy. So he's also helping with some massage, some bone whatever for people with weak bones, weak muscles and he's really doing a good job. He's running a homemade physical therapy in orthopedic center in a small shed in his yard and it is absolutely remarkable. And the point is using the bone is made by herbs, by plants, locally made. He says he's managing really how to do that. Some work can be done for two or three days, but it's taking long because of limited equipment, limited equipment means I mean. Right, his tools he often has to work with hand drills and other very limited tools, which means his work tends to take considerably longer. But he's skilled. Right. He's really skilled. Right. So let me just say please that we're running out of time. So I need to know are there any other quick comments or questions that anybody may have. I think Jessica may have said that we'll be able to do another one of these DVCs in the future where we can be focusing on a specific issue and have further discussion. So are there any comments or questions remaining? Does anybody have a final comment? Any questions? Hello, nice to meet you. I'm working for Andika Paternationale. Hi. Just to say that your story was very inspiring and when you talked about work in coalition, that's really what we are doing with the team for the project. Thank you for working with different partners and also working with them at the moment when we speak. Our program is training the disabled people organization for inclusive education. So we are training the people in the community for them to be able to sensitize the parents and everyone in the community to send their children to school. So yeah, we have this program that you talked about that we are doing with the ministry of education and we hope the next challenges for us is to continue in the secondary school because for the moment it's only in primary school. So there is a big concern about the children where they are nine, 10 years old. In the 10th part of the moment there is no inclusive education in secondary school. So that's a big challenges and also probably to extend to other provinces in Hong Kong. I was with my colleague but I think we will have time to talk a little bit about the rights of disabled people in Hong Kong because we are in a very particular time in DRC today for the rights of disabled people which also there is a lot of things to do but probably we will have time to continue the discussion. After the call we're going to continue the discussion. Maybe you could also send me an email with a little bit of information about where you see progress and where you see areas that still need to be worked on. That would be great. Okay, thank you. Is anyone there from CBM? Hi. Your English is better than my French. I'm working from CBM. We are working with some organizations who are working about disability people, children. Then there are inclusive schools. We have two organizations, one here with the Belaj Bondeco and another in Hong Kong with Heri Gwebtu. She was asked to set the town. Then in spite of that organizations we're working also with some other churches that are working in CBR. Then there we found also children that are for Yampi. Yampi is called inclusive. It stands to the, not specific but inclusive school, yes. And also CBM is encouraging organizations to use people with disabilities. I have an example. Maurice is a disability who is working in CBM. So I want to say that that's I think a very important point that one of the reasons why the US government has been pushing to recruit disabled people into the government is because we believe it's the right thing to do. And the private sector in the US is also obligated not to discriminate in the area of employment of disabled people. So we believe that government should be leading by example as should non-governmental organizations also be hiring disabled individuals for sure if the work they're doing is in the area of disability. So I think we're needing to close this up. And Jessica, I presume you'd like to make a couple of remarks. Let me just say on our part that we very much appreciate the great work that the embassy did and USAID and others on making this DVC happen. We very much look forward to being able to continue to work with you and to look to the future where we can be discussing solutions that you're continuing to develop and have some documentation also that we can share not only within the United States government that's working in DRC but also with others. I think good examples of what you're doing will also benefit other countries who are addressing similar issues. So thank you. Jessica. Thank you. I know we're pressed for time so I'm going to be very brief. I would like to thank everyone who's come here today for recognizing the importance of this issue and I would really like to see this be the beginning of a successful partnership between the organizations here. I would like to thank the special advisor for being willing to contribute your time not only during the call but during the planning. You are very generous in sharing access to information resources and helping us develop ideas in terms of what to look at for this education. And I hope that soon we will be able to show you some significant progress as a result of this call. Thank you. Okay. Thank you all. Thank you so much.