My Major, My Right” Initiative Promotes Inclusion and Rights-Based Participation for Students with Disabilities in Higher Education
As part of the Youth Partnership Forum project’s efforts to promote inclusion, equity, and participation in higher education, members of the self-help group for female students and graduates with disabilities conducted intensive capacity-building training under the initiative “My Major, My Right… My Voice Shapes Decisions.” The training aimed to empower students and graduates, particularly persons with disabilities, to move from being service recipients to becoming active partners and rights holders whose voices are heard. It also strengthened their ability to express their needs and engage in dialogue, advocacy, and decision-making.
The training provided a safe space for dialogue, sharing experiences, and discussing the challenges students face in higher education institutions, particularly environmental and policy barriers, as well as practices that may limit full participation.
The programme covered educational rights and inclusion in higher education, a rights-based approach to disability, advocacy and influencing skills, participation and decision-making, ways to communicate needs, and the development of advocacy messages and engagement with decision-makers. Interactive methods connected knowledge of rights with lived experiences, transforming individual challenges into shared issues and collective advocacy messages.
The training marks the first step in a series of activities planned under the initiative. These include documenting university experiences through the “My University Story” component, holding a dialogue session bringing together students and graduates with representatives of universities and civil society organisations, launching an “Inclusive Universities Charter,” and implementing the “My Voice Shapes Decisions” digital campaign. Together, these activities aim to open direct channels for dialogue and strengthen students’ participation in decisions and policies that shape their educational experiences.
The initiative forms part of the Youth Partnership Forum’s inclusion and social justice activities, implemented under the supervision of MA’AN Development Center and the Popular Art Centre, with support and funding from Solidarité Socialiste (Solsoc), Belgium.
