The Anakosmos Impact in partnership with Anakosmos Hub will be launching a project on Impact Business Modules in early 2023, for persons with disabilities.

The overarching goal of this project is to achieve social inclusion for most persons with disabilities based on principles of promotion of equal opportunities and non-discrimination of persons with disabilities.

Anakosmos believes that giving appropriate support to persons with disabilities can contribute meaningfully to sustainable development and foster poverty alleviation by ensuring a fair distribution of development opportunities and benefits in society.

Agenda 2030 which is the Sustainable Development Goal provides that disability cannot be a reason for the lack of access to development programming and the realization of human rights.

It includes seven explicit targets concerning persons with disabilities and six other goals regarding persons in vulnerable situations with disabilities inclusive.

Also, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) promotes the full integration of persons with disabilities in societies.

This Convention particularly references the significance of international development in addressing the rights of persons with disabilities.

According to World Bank Statistics, more than one billion people which is about 15% of the world’s population suffer from disabilities, with about 1 million children inclusive.

This shows that disability is a global phenomenon as any family can have a disabled person. Similarly, according to World Health Organization reports, more than a billion people in the world have some form of disability and a quarter of this number face great difficulties in performance, as their disability rate reaches 70% or more.

Narrowing down to low-and middle-income countries (LMICs), the prevalence of disability is higher in high-income nations and has been predicted to be between 10% and 15% of the total population of 400 million people in LMICs.

Eighty million of these people live in Africa of which three percent (3.7%) forms part of Ghana’s population.

In light of this, Anakosmos has come up with this project initiative because it has come to its realization that despite the efforts by several organisations together with some governmental policies and programs to aid persons with disability to build their capacities and provide a source of livelihood for themselves, there is still a considerable number of efforts needed to close the empowerment gap as traditional medical and charity model approaches have been inadequate and have largely failed to foster disability-inclusive development.

Again, Anakosmos is inspired by this project initiative because it believes that assistive technology can compensate for the limitations of persons with disabilities just as some persons with disabilities relied on assistive technologies to reach their goals and dreams in life.

For instance, the scientist Stephen Howking used assistive technology to compensate for mobility and speech difficulties by the use of his thumb and a blink switch attached to his lens to be able to scan and select from screens to communicate as well as to compose and give his speeches since he was a great scientist and was ordinarily invited to programs which required him to deliver speeches.

Also, just recently, a young lawyer Mr. Carruthers Tetteh, Esq, a member of the Advisory board of the Anakosmos Impact (PWD Inclusion Program) who is visually impaired, was called to the Ghana Bar. It is much apparent that he could not have fulfilled his dream of becoming a lawyer without the aid or use of technology.

These persons with disabilities together with some successful others who have overcome their limitations have made it known and inspired Anakosmos that having a disability does not exclude people from discovering and pursuing their dreams and passions in life. 

About Talent Discovery, several people in the country are well-endowed but are not exposed to the use and benefits of technology.

It is therefore the goal of Anakosmos to also help such people to discover some technological aid to help them unleash their potentials. 

Coming to the knowledge of the lack of technology in the system for both persons with disability and talent discovery, the founders of Anakosmos Impact, Emmanuel Atsu and Dorcas Sarkodie Ekuban believe that this goal will aid in transforming our country and even the world at large.

In bridging this empowerment gap, Anakosmos Impact has a fully Integrated Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) based model for Education, Business Development and Enterprise Support, Talent discovery and nurturing, Technological Innovation and Livelihood Support which will provide persons with disabilities with skills for enhanced value addition to the society while using them as a springboard to foster tech solutions to the community in which they live and thus providing an employment route and blueprint for persons with disabilities to foster disability-inclusive development.

In light of this, the Anakosmos Impact and the Anakosmos Hub observed the UN Day for Persons With Disabilities on the 3rd of December, 2022.