CBM attends the World CBR Congress

CBM will attend the 2nd World CBR Congress from Sept 27-29 2016 in Kuala Lumpur. The theme for the 2nd World Congress is “CBR: Empowering and Enabling”. The focus is to provide a setting for diverse communities of practice, policy, education, research and social development to engage in a dialogue to promote the well-being of persons with disability around the world.

What is Community Based Rehabilitation?

Community-based rehabilitation (CBR) strives for a better life for everyone in the community, including people with disabilities. It is a rights-based approach that aims to bring persons with disabilities and the community together on an equal basis.

CBR is concerned with community action, which guarantees the same rights and opportunities for everyone, including persons with disabilities, in order to maximize the full potential of everyone in the community. It believes in the ability, potential and right of persons with disabilities to contribute to progress. CBR also believes in the inherent capacities of any community and begins by living, listening, learning and sharing with the community. CBR is an approach which aims to deliver specialized services and access mainstream services, builds on what is already happening in any community, utilizes local resources AND break down barriers so that people with disabilities have the same rights, the same opportunities as their fellow citizens.


CBM's work in CBR

CBR is a central component of CBM’s programmatic approach. CBM works alongside CBR and Community Based Inclusive Development partners in 50 low and middle income countries around the world implementing 169 projects.


CBM at the World CBR Congress

The CBR World Congress brings together practitioners, people with disabilities, development agencies, governments and academics from across the globe. The 2nd CBR World Congress, is hosted by the Malaysian government and Malaysian CBR Network and will be held September 26 – 29th. CBM and its partners are proud to note that our work is well-represented in the Congress program with about 30 accepted abstracts being presented by CBM partners or staff from around the world. In addition CBM, along with key partners, is facilitating a Pre-Congress workshop on Disaster Risk Reduction and CBR and is co-facilitating a workshop on BRIDGE, an IDA and IDDC initiative which supports DPO activists in advocating for an inclusive, CRPD perspective on development and Agenda 2030.

This second CBR World Congress marks an important opportunity as we celebrate 10 years of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and welcome Agenda 2030, which recognizes equity as central to development and for the first time brings the human rights and development agendas together on the global stage. 

Now more than ever CBM sees community based inclusive development as an essential strategy. With our partners across the world we look forward to an exciting Congress as we assemble together with the global CBR community to take the pulse of this bottom-up strategy and set a bold agenda for a future that leaves no one behind.

The strength of CBR lies in its capacity to organise disenfranchised individuals toward inclusive development across sectors, it is potentially a powerful, perhaps the most powerful, bottom-up strategy available to ensure that ‘no one is left behind’ in the implementation of the SDGs.
Alarcos Cieza Morena, Coordinator, Disability and Rehabilitation at the W

Community Based Inclusive Development

CBID is CBM’s approach to enable disability inclusive development on the ground.


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