With the purpose to improve the independence and quality of life for people with disabilities in the municipality of Chair, A.P.D. "Shpresa", in cooperation with the French organization "Handicap International", many other organizations, and of course, with strong support from the municipality of Chair, encouraged the creation of the local action plan for the people with disabilities which is entirely based on the United Nations standards.
This project was realized during the year 2007, and was highlighted by it acceptance on December 7th, 2007, when this plan approved by the municipality council.
This project recognized all the problems that preoccupy the people with disabilities in the territory of the Chair municipality, and as it was predicted, the three year period of implementation started. At the beginning of 2008, a contract was signed between A.P.D. Shpresa and the French organization "Handicap International", solely for the implementation of this plan, and during this year, the working group which was predicted to be formed, in cooperation with the representatives of the municipality, did a very successful job and achieved these results:

• With our activities, we built 2 access ramps in front of 2 public institutions;


• APD Shpresa realized a course in field of IT, which lasted 3 months, starting September 10th, 2008 until December 28th, 2008;


• Access for people with disabilities was built in the main entrance of the municipality of Chair, which was built by all the building standards;


• Preparations for the foundation of the information office that will work based on the one-counter system;

It is understandable that we, as an association, the activities for the implementation of the local action plan 2008-2010, will continue during 2009 and we hope that we can achieve bigger and more concrete results.

The preparation phase of this project started on September 10th, 2008 and the actual training started on October 20th, 2008. Twenty four of our members, divided into 4 groups of 4, were predicted to follow this training, based on their previous knowledge in the field of I.T. This training took place in the educational training, a part of APD “Shpresa”. This project lasted until December 28th, 2008, and was financially supported by the City of Skopje.

The association of people with disabilities Shpresa, during the last 3 years, dedicated itself to create the conditions for the overall inclusion of the people with disabilities in the regular schools. This is not unintentionally, since is well known that the education of a person is what builds up it’s character.
The projects that contributed for the creating of the conditions are implemented in different ways. When we say that, we mean the changes that the project suffered in time, all in favor of its perfection. This means that until 2 years ago, this project was implemented solely threw the theater play. Lately, a workshop is predicted as well. The last project was financially supported by the well known Soros foundation, and was implemented in Strumica, Stip, Veles and Struga. This project started with the implementation on November 1st, 2007 and lasted until April 30th, 2008.

The goal of this project was to gather together the representatives of all the educational institutions, representatives of all NGOs, and representatives from the municipality since the municipality has most of the authorities in the field of education, to sensitize, encourage and create the conditions for the best possible inclusion of children with disabilities in the regular schools.

The conditions to be fulfilled are:
-Every educational institution to have physical access;
-Every educational institution to have a defectologist employed;
-All the educational institutions are to be equipped with medical equipment for the pupils with disability;

The second goal of this project was, in parallel, to give out research papers to all the representatives present in the workshop, which had questions like: how many schools in that municipality have physical access, how many children with disability actually go to those schools and do those schools have defectologists employed.

The third goal of this project was the raising awareness, no matter if its about the pupils in those schools or the teachers, so they will accept these children in their society without stereotypes or prejudges.

This project was implemented in two phases:
-The first phase was organizing a workshop for the previously mentioned representatives from the particular municipality, in which the lectured the defectologist;

-The second phase was the presentation of the Street Theatre, which was meant to be seen by the children of all the schools in that municipality;


This was all followed by posters and fliers.
With this project, the following municipalities were included as well, beyond the 4 municipalities mentioned: Skopje, Kumanovo, Tetovo, Gostivar, Kicevo and Kavadarci. With this same project, we intend to include all the rest of the municipalities of Macedonia, because this is the only way we can say that we didn’t discriminate the people with disabilities who live in these municipalities.

Many people with disabilities are in need of wheelchairs and cannot afford to purchase them, even with social help from the government. We recently completed a project, in cooperation with the United States Peace Corps in Macedonia that provided wheelchairs to those in need in Macedonia and helped bridge this gap in governmental social service.

The idea for the project was born two years ago during a meeting between the previous Peace Corps director and the President of APD “Shpresa”, Elvat Muharemi. The commitment and cooperation of APD Shpresa and Peace Corps Macedonia brought the project to realization this past year. On July 15th, 2008, we received word that 280 wheelchairs had been shipped to Greece for our project and were ready to be brought to Macedonia. The necessary documentation was prepared and the government of Macedonia allowed the wheelchairs to be brought into the country exempt of duty fees. Logistics company Orbit handled the customs process and the wheelchairs were stored in a warehouse until the planned date to give them to members that had applied for a wheelchair.

On August 1st, 2008, we invited our members and their families, Peace Corps Macedonia and media representatives, to join us for giving out the wheelchairs. The event was very emotional for all of us; our members, along with their families were overjoyed to be able to receive the wheelchairs.


In the following months, we have dispersed wheelchairs to other organizations:Another event for giving out the wheelchairs was held in Kumanovo on September 14th. APD “Shpresa” was present, along with Peace Corps representatives. The weather was less than ideal for such an occasion and few people were able to be present to receive their wheelchairs. However, close family members were able to deliver them. The other organizations were unable to arrange an event in their cities.