Overview

Cheshire Livelihood Resource Centre 

The Leonard Cheshire Disability works for overall development and rights of Persons with disabilities in over 55 countries of world. Under its programme for livelihood of persons with disability, it developed the concept of Livelihood Resource Centre and planned to launch it in five different locations across South Asia. This concept matched with the vision of Cheshire Home Bangalore, for extending the support of Cheshire Home to the wider community, which was till then restricted to only the residents of Home.

To start this project, The Cheshire Homes India, Bangalore signed an agreement with Leonard Cheshire Disability.  Accenture-UK  agreed to fund the project in all the 5 locations, which included Bangalore, Nagapattinam, Pakistan, Srilanka and Bangladesh.

The CLRC Bangalore was launched as the flagship project in 2008. It is managed by a management committee including Board Members of Cheshire Home, one member from the LCD South Asia Regional Office and the Manager of CLRC. While the Cheshire Homes India, Bangalore has taken the responsibility to run the project effectively and putting every effort towards making it an excellent centre with innovative programme, the LCD SARO gives technical inputs for managing the programmes effectively and also, ensures the fund flow.

The vision behind CLRC is to develop a one stop shop for all the livelihood needs for persons with disability. This centre aims to work in the following areas:

- Providing information to any information seekar including disabled people, employers and others from community, related to livelihood, rights and facilities for persons with disability by information material, demonstration, consultation etc.

- Career guidance to disabled youth

- Skill building for Disabled persons through range of training programmes

- Placement support to disabled people

- Support for self employment to disabled people

- Supporting the corporate sector for adopting the inclusive policies and facilitating the employment of PWDs

- Advocacy for rights of PWDs.

In the past two years, the Cheshire Livelihood Resource Centre, Bangalore has evolved as an excellent model for facilitating the "livelihood of PWDs for ensuring a life with dignity. The success of the model has encouraged LCD-UK to upscale this to the  national level. Plans for the implementation of the project across India are being prepared.