Field Sites
Please explore my field sites on the continuing pages. For the sake of privacy and confidentiality, I will not be including the names of these organizations. I will give brief introductions to the reasons I selected these sites, descriptions of the sites, and what types of information I received from my work in each category.
In my time in Makeni, I visited three hospitals: one government hospital, one private secular hospital, and one private religious hospital. I worked with nurses to learn about the resources available to persons with disabilities in terms of health and well-being. The nurses were also extremely helpful in illuminating social perceptions of persons with disabilities as they described their own experiences and the interactions they had witnessed.
I visited two special education schools- one school for the hearing impaired of approximately 250 students, and one school for the visually impaired of approximately 40. Both are specifically focused on special education, though both have programs intended to mainstream some older students into junior secondary schools. Both schools are also involved to some extent in capacity building projects in the Makeni community, including disability awareness campaigns. These schools provided information regarding educational resources and options available to students with disabilities, and the teachers and carers were able to provide detailed insights as to the social setting of disability that impact the students' lives.
Five organizations of varying size and focus also provided information regarding resources and social perceptions. Most had specific target populations, including persons with polio, persons with visual impairment, and women with disabilities. I worked with these organizations to learn what projects they were working on and why, which allowed insight as to the focuses and motivations of the groups. Again, the leaders of the organizations were crucial in describing the social impacts of disability and interactions between disability groups and the community.