In 1990, when Char­lene was just 20-years-old, tragedy struck mere min­utes away from her home. She was se­vere­ly in­jured when the car she was trav­el­ing in burst in­to flames af­ter a head-on col­li­sion.

“Earth­ly an­gels”, as Char­lene now calls them, braved the fire to pull her and the dri­ver out to safe­ty. Her body cov­ered in third de­gree burns, lac­er­a­tions and frac­tures, she was con­sid­ered on the brink of death when she ar­rived at the lo­cal hos­pi­tal.

“It was a trau­mat­ic and ex­treme­ly life al­ter­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and I had to learn to do things dif­fer­ent­ly,” Char­lene re­calls.

As she was be­ing rushed to the op­er­at­ing the­atre, Char­lene slipped in­to a co­ma. Mirac­u­lous­ly, or per­haps as a tes­ta­ment of her faith, she woke up six days lat­er just be­fore she was about to be tak­en off life-sup­port.

In the ten months Char­lene spent in hos­pi­tal, her health se­vere­ly de­te­ri­o­rat­ed. Her par­ents and neigh­bours raised funds to take her to Venezuela for or­thopaedic surgery to help re­cov­er the use of her legs. She spent eight months un­der­go­ing op­er­a­tions and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive treat­ment.

In De­cem­ber 1991, af­ter 18 months of hos­pi­tal­iza­tion both at home and abroad, Char­lene re­turned to T&T us­ing a wheel­chair. It would take an­oth­er surgery in Venezuela two years lat­er to re­store her mo­bil­i­ty. On this long road to re­cov­ery, she even­tu­al­ly grad­u­at­ed to crutch­es and, when need­ed, a tri­pod walk­ing stick.

“I was able to walk out the street to get trans­porta­tion and move around on my own,” Char­lene says.

But an­oth­er cru­el twist of fate in 2006 put Char­lene at the cen­tre of a sec­ond ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dent, this time in a bus for per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties. The force of the im­pact threw her from the back of the bus to the front, break­ing her left fe­mur for a sec­ond time. This new in­jury re­turned her to a wheel­chair once again.

“This set me back to ground ze­ro,” Char­lene says. “To this day, I have not re­gained my in­de­pen­dence. I be­came to­tal­ly de­pen­dent, most times, on in­de­pen­dent peo­ple. I felt os­tra­cized, dis­crim­i­nat­ed against by so­ci­ety at large and crip­pled by my sur­round­ings and in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing the home I grew up in!”

Char­lene is un­able to par­tic­i­pate in cer­tain ac­tiv­i­ties, or­gan­i­sa­tions and events be­cause dis­abil­i­ty-friend­ly ser­vices and fa­cil­i­ties, in­clud­ing re­strooms, are of­ten un­avail­able.

“Not even the med­ical fa­cil­i­ties have prop­er ac­cess in ex­am­i­na­tion rooms and en­ter­ing build­ings,” she laments. “This in­cludes lim­it­ed ac­cess to den­tal and eye care, hos­pi­tal and health cen­tres.”

Hav­ing a fused leg makes it chal­leng­ing to ac­quire the right type of wheel­chair to aid her mo­bil­i­ty. She has not been able to get a wheel­chair that both holds her right leg in place and with­stands the wear and tear of the out­doors. She al­so has chal­lenges with some el­e­va­tors due to the size.

Like Char­lene, per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties (PWDs) in Trinidad and To­ba­go face in­equal­i­ty, a gen­er­al lack of ac­cess to ser­vices and poor so­cio-eco­nom­ic out­comes. This is large­ly due to weak leg­is­la­tion and en­force­ment, lack of pub­lic aware­ness of the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of PWDs, lim­it­ed sen­si­ti­za­tion of PWDs on their rights, lim­it­ed knowl­edge and com­pe­ten­cies among or­gan­i­sa­tions pro­vid­ing key ser­vices to this pop­u­la­tion, and lim­it­ed ac­cess to re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion ser­vices, health ser­vices, ed­u­ca­tion and em­ploy­ment at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el.

Unit­ed Na­tions Pop­u­la­tion Fund (UNF­PA) and Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO), through the Part­ner­ship on the rights of Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties Project (UN­PRPD), are pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal sup­port and fa­cil­i­tat­ing mul­ti-stake­hold­er part­ner­ships with PWDs and or­gan­i­sa­tions for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties (OPDS) to ad­dress these chal­lenges.

Even as she strug­gled to re­cu­per­ate from her life-al­ter­ing tragedy, Char­lene felt a call­ing to sup­port oth­er peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties. Her new way of life awak­ened in her a great de­sire to em­pow­er peo­ple like her who face chal­lenges be­cause of their dis­abil­i­ty.

Char­lene, now pres­i­dent and founder of the Trinidad and To­ba­go As­so­ci­a­tion for Dif­fer­ent­ly Abled Per­sons (TNTADAP), has par­tic­i­pat­ed in the UN­PRD project’s ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing work­shops.

“Knowl­edge is pow­er,” Char­lene says em­phat­i­cal­ly. “It is scan­dalous­ly de­plorable that there are so many flaws in the laws that per­tain specif­i­cal­ly to the way in which the words ‘per­son with a dis­abil­i­ty’ or ‘dif­fer­ent­ly-abled per­sons’ are re­ferred to in le­gal doc­u­ments. These ses­sions were not on­ly eye-open­ing, but they helped em­pow­er the par­tic­i­pants to bet­ter un­der­stand the way for­ward.”

The UN­PRPD project al­so fo­cus­es on strength­en­ing and im­prov­ing dis­abil­i­ty da­ta col­lec­tion; re­view­ing laws and poli­cies; in­creas­ing pub­lic aware­ness and un­der­stand­ing of dis­abil­i­ty; in­vest­ing in spe­cif­ic pro­grammes and ser­vices for PWDs; im­prov­ing the gov­er­nance and co­or­di­na­tion of OPDs, and strength­en­ing dis­abil­i­ty in­clu­sion with­in the UN.

The Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co-op­er­a­tive Stud­ies pro­vid­ed the ca­pac­i­ty build­ing work­shops on Pro­pos­al Writ­ing; Bud­get­ing, Plan­ning and Fi­nan­cial Man­age­ment; Ad­vo­ca­cy; Change Man­age­ment and Lead­er­ship and Oral and Writ­ten Com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

The work­shops are al­ready bring­ing greater aware­ness of the need for NGOs to col­lab­o­rate to ad­vo­cate for the ap­pro­pri­ate laws to be in place for PWDs.

“It is my de­sire that this col­lab­o­ra­tion be­gins NOW,” Char­lene says “I want to en­cour­age groups to ex­e­cute a strong ad­vo­ca­cy plan and to lob­by for leg­is­la­tion to be put in place specif­i­cal­ly for per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties. With new med­ical ad­vance­ments now avail­able, Char­lene hopes to find a physi­cian with the ex­per­tise to analyse her case and help her re­gain her mo­bil­i­ty.

“As the singer Michael Bolton says, ‘I’ll be back on my feet again, I’ll walk proud down the street again, and they’ll all look at me and then, they’ll see that I am strong.’”