Four Pillars of Inclusion

Recently I attended a meeting of the Inclusive Education Community of Practice, a group hosted by the Global Campaign for Education -- US (GCE-US). The meeting topic was "effective advocacy" with a panel featuring three former senior officials from the World Bank, the Global Partnership for Education, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Bob Prouty, Don Steinberg, and Emily Vargas-Baron spoke on the questions, “What does effective advocacy look like from the inside of a donor agency?" and "What efforts led to significant and substantive changes in the behavior and practice of your agency’s leaders and staff, and ultimately, shaped its programming?”

During the session, Don Steinberg, former USAID deputy administrator during the Obama Administration, shared a four-pillar model of inclusion from his experience at USAID.

Check out a short recap of his remarks in this video:

The Inclusive Education Community of Practice was launched earlier this year as an effort to increase the DC facing advocacy around inclusive education as well as respond to the demand for conversation around inclusive education. I was introduced to the group when the co-chair, Anna Martin, Disability Inclusive Education Advocacy Officer at GCE-US, moderated a session at the World Bank Civil Society Policy Forum during the Spring Meetings. This COP focuses on “advocacy and knowledge sharing that results in funding for disability-inclusive education,” said Anna, in announcing the COP’s formation. The goal is to move disability-inclusive education “from the margins to the very center of all education funded programs and activities” in countries around the world.

Is inclusion part of your work? Please let me know if you have any resources that you find useful for facilitating inclusive practices or policies at the community or organizational level (or both) and I’ll share them here on the blog.

#InclusiveEducation #Advocacy #disability #disabilityinclusiveeducation