This summer, I interned at a non-governmental organization (NGO) in Bolivia called Tukuy Pacha, which works to support people with disabilities – along with their families and communities – in the municipalities surrounding the Cochabamba area. Tukuy Pacha works under the framework of Rehabilitacion Basada en la Comunidad (RBC), or Community-Based Rehabilitation, to provide support for people with disabilities. The NGO addresses the lack of resources of people with disabilities and their families. For example, patients have a hard time acquiring the services that the organization provides, like workshops, home visits, legal support, and technical aids, elsewhere.
I worked within each of the main sectors of the organization, exploring physical therapy, political advocacy, communications, and marketing. My group members and I worked to combine the tasks and goals of each subject area into one cohesive aim: to improve Tukuy Pacha’s visibility. To achieve this goal, my group members and I created organizational and informative materials to increase feasibility and productivity of patient home visits. We designed a database of the exercises that patients are typically assigned. Each exercise was printed individually, with a small progress log on the back and some information about a specific legal right that people with disabilities have and how to enforce it. Tukuy Pacha’s physical therapist can then compile different pages into a personalized manual for each patient based on their physical therapeutic needs. Our aim was to increase legal rights awareness and political empowerment. We also compiled the whole database of exercises and other information together to create a bigger manual for the community promotors, to reference when they go visit the clients to follow up on the physical therapist’s visit. With this work, we hope to facilitate Tukuy Pacha’s efforts to provide rehabilitation for people with disabilities within communities. In terms of working to improve the organization’s image, we redesigned the website, created a pitch deck powerpoint, conducted interviews with community members and Tukuy Pacha staff, and organized their social media accounts. The objective of this was to learn more about the stories of the people that the organization is supporting, help Tukuy Pacha gain insight on what they need to improve in their services, and to provide material for the website for outsiders, including potential donors. I hope that this work will contribute to increasing Tukuy Pacha visibility worldwide and facilitate their fundraising efforts.
In the time that I spent in Bolivia, I witnessed how people with disabilities face a lot of barriers to live a healthy, educated, socially mobilized, inclusive, and economically subsistent life. It sometimes seems that a person’s disability takes over their entire identity, in the eyes of their society. In Bolivia, there is still a lot of stigma surrounding people with disabilities, and that is something that Tukuy Pacha wants to chip away at. Our conversations with Tukuy Pacha employees and community members allowed us to better understand their needs and helped us in the process of creating material that would be useful, accessible, and culturally-responsible.In addition to my work in Tukuy Pacha, I also got to see many of the beautiful sights that Bolivia has to offer. I was lucky enough to be able to visit Mountain Tunari, which is the highest mountain in the city that I was staying in. It literally took my breath away, because it was so hard to breathe at such a high altitude. In Copacabana, I enjoyed watching the sunset from the top of a mountain that overlooked the whole town. I also took fairy rides to the Island of the Sun and to the Island of the Moon. I got to see dinosaur footprints at Torotoro National Park, along with astonishing canyons and shimmering waterfalls. I set foot on the largest salt flat in the world at Salar de Uyuni and got to witness a beautiful red lake, flamingos, and geysers. In the city of La Paz, I got aboard an aerial lift that allowed me to see the whole city from above. In the city of Santa Cruz, I got to attend a Mana concert, which was a dream come true because they are my mom’s favorite band and I grew up listening to their music. Although these trips were amazing, the best part of my experience in Bolivia was my wonderful host family which welcomed me with open arms and made me feel at home, even when I was thousands of miles away from Chicago. I miss them dearly and will be eternally grateful for their hospitality and warmth