CCB to empower farmers with disabilities Cambodia and Indonesia are home to about 30 million economically active persons with disabilities and different groups of people with activity limitation (especially the elderly). Agriculture is a vital sector for the high percentage of the economically active population in the two countries, but it is one where persons with disability and the elderly face some of the greatest challenges and exclusion. Non-disabled people often assume that people with disabilities are incapable of doing agricultural work. Those with physical and visual impairments are perceived as being unable to move around farmland. Those with hearing and learning impairments are often believed to be incapable of learning agricultural techniques because of communication challenges. This denies tremendous opportunities for people living with disabilities to be self-sufficient productive members of society.
Farming is traditionally a labour-intensive profession that involves physically demanding work. With the use of assistive technology, farmers with a disability can maintain their independence and productive lifestyle on the farm. Promoting access to such technologies, particularty through participatory design processes to develop and test user-led assistive technology in agriculture,can be a direct way to promote the (self)empowerment of some of the most marginalised in rural areas. Therefore, the objective of this project is to share knowledge on Creative Capacity Building (CCB) in Cambodia and Indonesia, as an inclusive design methodology with the objective of creating awareness, developing transformative leadership, and promoting the (self)empowerment of those groups so-far excluded in rural farming areas, with a particular focus on people with disabilities and the elderly.

TheCreative Capacity Building (CCB) is a methodology which has been used to help farmers, including those with a disability in rural Cambodia, to develop their own problem-solving capacities. Being a human centred design approach, it aims to build knowledgeand confidence in the participants while they identify solutions (i.e. assistive technology) to the problems they face in their daily life while working in farming and agricultural activities. But it is also an awareness raising and transformative leadership tool where the end users of the assistive technology are involved in the entire design process.

As a social innovation tool, the CCB methodology uses a five stage model to develop assistive technologies, comprising of: formation and planning, pre-design, generative design, evaluative design, and post design phases. The entire process follows a participatory human centred design process, where a problem is identified, researched, ideas are generated, experimented and most promising solution are designed built and tested.

For this project, the Cambodian Development Mission for Disability (CDMD) as the lead applicant, is partnering with Pursat Rehabilitaties Yakkumwith (PRY) in Indonesia, and with Light for the World in Cambodia andEngineers without Boarders as technical advisors. Both CDMD and PRY have worked in the community development space for many years with a focus on disability inclusion. Together, the project partners share the same set of values enshrined in the United Nations Conventionon the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) and fully believe that no one should be left behind. Together, the project seeks to find new ways to learn together and share lessons in employing CCB to advabce this shared vision of participatory and inclusive development.