Adios Durban!

Our first week in Durban is over and we’re packing up to head over to the Western Cape, where we will spend a week working and living at the QASA facilities. We’ve learned a lot while in Durban and working at the KZN Ashley Digital Village. The Digital Village is a computer-learning center where quadra- and parapalegics are given computer literacy training. At the Village we examined and suggested improvements for the current training materials and led two skill-building workshops on ‘active listening’ and ‘root-cause analysis’. We spent a lot of time sensitizing ourselves and orienting our viewpoints to understand a new way of living, not only understanding a new culture but also in learning particularly how people with disabilities live in South Africa. We were able see first-hand how QASA empowers its members with the tools necessary to gain employment. Not only are they training disabled persons to re-enter the workforce but the on-site trainers also live with a disability. Again we are noticing a pattern of self-sufficiently. Here QASA exhibits a pattern of training and employing its own people so that they in turn are influencing other disabled persons to live a full life.