IDENTIFICATION for INCLUSION (ID4I)

People with Intellectual Disabilities (PWIDs) are among the most vulnerable groups in Nigeria. Over 70% of guardians of PWIDs report that their wards lack a legal means of identification, limiting their access to social services, thus compounding the pre-existing segregation and prejudice held against them.

The ID4I solution aims to facilitate the issuance of national ID cards for this vulnerable group in Nigeria, by educating communities of PWIDs on the benefits of having an ID card, training staff of the national ID issuing body - National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) - on how to work effectively with PWIDs, automating data collection, deploying mobile teams to various special schools and centres and tracking the progress of ID issuance.

This solution has the potential to be scaled globally which will aid social and political recognition of vulnerable groups and influence policy decisions. 

People with intellectual disabilities are often disregarded in developing countries, leading to their needs being underserved. Evidence suggests obtaining an ID card is one of the crucial steps towards establishing regard in the society.

In Nigeria, the current system of national ID card issuance by NIMC began in 2007, yet, according to Special Olympics Nigeria 2020 findings, in a sample population of 30 families, guardians of PWIDs report that less than 15% of their wards possess an ID card. This equates to less 500,000 of the estimated 3.2 million PWIDs in Nigeria having a national identity card.

The low rate of identity possession of this group is as a result of certain deterrents such as the communication barriers and limited skill of personnel in handling PWID, dependence on the assistance of a guardian, absence of priority treatment, and the economic barriers such as transport costs of multiple visits to an enrollment center.

Access to international passport issuance, employment, and the potential service benefits from the disability rights bill implementation is dependent on the possession of an ID. This further excludes this group socially and financially, delving them deeper into substandard living conditions. 

This solution is targeted towards people with intellectual disabilities (PWIDs) which according to the World Health Organization (WHO), have a significantly reduced ability to understand new or complex information and impaired intelligence, resulting in a reduced ability to cope independently.  In low-income countries, it is estimated that there are 16 PWIDs in every 1000 people (Special Olympics), translating to an estimated 3.2 million PWIDs in Nigeria.

To scale ID registration of PWIDs, we engaged PWIDs, and their families through the Family Forums, to understand their challenges with the ID system and develop a solution.

The ID4I solution was inspired by the world of opportunities that an identification holds. An ID card establishes existence and is a compulsory requirement for any form of registration and access to benefits. This includes issuance of an international passport to participate in any international competitions, and access to various healthcare, education, voting, employment, financial and social services.  

People with intellectual disabilities are a vulnerable and marginalized group that face multiple barriers to obtaining a good quality of life, thereby experiencing higher rates of poverty.

Reducing barriers that contribute to a lower standard of living, requires public support and enforcement of policy changes and government-assisted social services provided. To facilitate these, accurate, verifiable identification and data on this population is required.

The ID4I solution deploys a community-based approach that champions the first nationwide identification processing for PWIDs, while preventing violations of their human rights and easing access to inclusive services. 

The ID4I solution recognizes the reasons behind the low enrollment rate of PWIDs and their family members and designed the following approach:

• Awareness and Education: Coordination of information session using specially tailored learning guides, videos, visual aids, to simplify the identification process for PWIDs and their family members in each community. Raising awareness, publicity of the solution, and informative sessions, is essential to the success of identification enrolment.
• Partnership & Training: Providing training to community leaders and local national ID issuing service providing mobile registration service to understand and interact with PWID. This optimizes national effort through local capacity building training, increasing awareness on disabilities, changing perception, and driving inclusion.
• Ease access to services: Deploying mobile registration to capture biometrics, issue unique identifiers to individuals within sensitized communities for a minimum of eight weeks. Bringing registration closer will eliminate identified transportation barriers and motivate enrollment.
• Database Management and Optimization: Deploying a data collection tool kickstarting the ID4I database of PWIDs without a legal National ID activating deployment of mobile registration
• Automated Checks: The ID issuing service provider releases status of registered PWIDs which is synched to the database. Monitoring the process to track progress of registration, issuance, dispatch/pick-up of the identification card to eliminate post registration card issuance delay/frustration. This automation will relieve stress of family members, and PWIDs whose health is high risk.

Pioneering this grassroot solution is key to driving inclusion and scaling up identification enrolment of PWIDs and their family members. 

The ID4I solution is a strategic grassroot project that will drive the vision of the Special Olympics movement to include people with intellectual disabilities (PWIDs) in society. Since being incorporated in 2003, our track record shows our proffered solutions to social issues faced by PWIDs in Nigeria including poor healthcare services, malaria, sports, and leadership opportunities, have been tackled with grassroot solutions in various communities.

By successfully organizing over 70 mobile clinic opportunities, providing medical screenings in various health disciplines to over 15,000 individuals, we have demonstrated that bringing services closer to this group results in better access. This is also seen in the over 14,000 competitions organized locally and internationally and provision of capacity building programs that have impacted over 26,000 PWIDs. International competitions are made possible through partnership liaisons with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), and Nigerian Immigration service, whereas community grassroot solutions are made possible through partnerships with National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), and other agencies. Our successful partnership with public bodies to achieve solutions, attests to our ability to work well with NIMC to implement the ID4I solution.

The ID4I initiative will train national Identity issuing services and volunteer community leaders to reach an estimated 3 million PWIDs in the long term. To raise awareness and educate PWIDs, their family, community members and leaders on the importance of identification, organize mobile registration in their communities, and track the number of successful registrations. Our history with this group has shown that grassroot community programs are most effective at achieving targeted results.

To achieve our long-term outcome of an inclusive world where PWIDs lead healthy and fulfilling lives from improved access to services, the following needs to be provided:

Education: Organizing grassroot education sessions in various communities will aid improved understanding of the importance of identification. It will lead to guardians, family, and community members of PWIDs understanding that through registration in the National identification system, they will acquire a Nigerian identity that will aid access to various services such as social insurance, employment, and financial services.

Mobile Services: Deployment of mobile registration teams to communities that have been sensitized will bring registration closer to people. The mobile team will be trained on the population they are to serve. These will reduce previous barriers to access service such as distance, crowd, acceptance of people with disabilities. 

Database: To effectively track the process from inception to completion, data will be collected on the population sensitized and those who were successfully registered. The database will track the progress from registration to issuance. Most importantly, it will provide to the government the record of the vulnerable group to provide social services to.

The provision of education and mobile service, to the people, alongside maintaining an effective database of registered PWIDs, will aid in ensuring this group has improved access to healthcare insurance, savings, education, factors that improve their standard of living and achieve the sustainable development goals.

The ID4I initiative’s theory of change is based on the logic that if we provide education, mobile service, effective database management on issuance and records, this will enable PWIDs to achieve their full potential and enjoy the same rights as anyone else and be respected by wider society.

Identification systems in Nigeria have been deployed since 1978 yet enrolment rate for the Nigerian population is currently less than 9% and will most likely remain low unless there is adequate tailored grassroot outreach especially targeted towards vulnerable groups.

The ID4I solution is designed to be integrated into identification systems as the solution incorporates stakeholder outreach, community engagement through educative sessions, and deployment of community targeted programs that enable access to identification registration.

The creation and adaptation of the enrolment guide will be used by people with intellectual disabilities in different populations, hence aiding other identification systems. Knowledge of the inclusion of vulnerable groups will improve the awareness of the general population of the importance of the Identification system for all people, thereby increasing understanding, support, and enrolment.

Data and other statistics gathered from the pilot of this solution will support the success of grassroot solutions and enable more investment to be made towards the deployment of similar solutions. The solution could be replicated in other communities nationally and internationally to support identification enrollment of people in vulnerable groups.

The ID4I solution is designed to enhance user access to the digital identification system in Nigeria. Each component is tailored to address existing challenges with identification registration for people with intellectual disabilities.

The learning aids to be developed for raising awareness and educational sessions will be made according to the language, mode of communication and comprehension level of this population and their communities. Thus, ensuring that the information is passed across effectively.

Simplification is key to ensuring that the digital identification system is easily accessed by every person in the country. Bringing the ID4I solution directly to communities will improve knowledge of the importance of identification systems and eliminate barriers to registration and scale up ID registration. Automating the issuance and pickup process will ease stress, tracking of identification issuance and data collection. All components designed to improve user experience and scale up enrolment in the identification system

The main phases of Identification systems include planning, program set up/enrolment, issuing of identification, and integrating issued identification. For any identification system to be successful, the entire population must undergo the enrolment process. Hence in a developing country with multiple barriers to this, the ID4I solution is critical to each phase as detailed below:

• Planning Phase: The planning phase of an identification system involves data collation, technology development, and policy implementation. The planning phase is crucial but will be ineffective without adequate sensitization, education and communication to the targeted population which is a component of the ID4I solution.
• Enrollment Phase: This phase entails execution of policies and set up of centers in various regions for the data capture. To support this phase, the mobile service coordination component of the ID4I solution is crucial as it is essential to the scaling up of enrolment.
• Issuance of ID: This phase covers data verification for integrity, functionality, and service deployment. The database component of the ID4I solution will automate some processes, collate store, analyze, and report data that will enable the national database identify populations to be supported and service deployment to vulnerable populations.

The ID4I solution is structured to co-exist with all identification systems as it is community based and flexible, as such, adjustments can be made according to regional and cultural differences. The simplicity of the solution makes it easy to be incorporated into ID systems and makes it pivotal to scale up enrollment success rate, especially to vulnerable groups. 

The ID4I solution is cognizant of the existing challenges when serving vulnerable communities as they are more likely to experience various social lack such as poverty, inadequate network and connectivity, and illiteracy. Hence the proposed solution is structured to address these challenges as follows:

Education - Sensitization and education is essential to increase awareness. The information delivery will match literacy levels, language, and preferred mode of communication of the target communities. This will aid in effective communication on the solution, the importance of ID, and the benefits of registration for identification.

Mobile service - Deployment of mobile services to the grassroot community brings registration closer to the people. This improves connection of the people to the identification systems, reducing access barriers and improving enrollment across communities and regions.

Database Development - The ID4I database has the functionality of working offline and can be used to still capture necessary data that will be synched when connection is established. The availability of the outlined features makes ID4I the most effective solution to improve connectivity of vulnerable groups thereby promoting their inclusion in society.

The ID4I solution has had a successful test registration for an identification system with a sample size of over 500 people. The goal of official deployment in the first year is to reach 200,000 people with the aim of registering at least seventy percent of the estimated 3.2 million people living with intellectual disabilities in Nigeria over the next five years.

Our vision is to promote and strategically position the Special Olympics Nigeria brand to be recognized as the preferred partner for fostering social impact and inclusive services through sports, healthcare, and empowerment programs for people with intellectual disabilities (PWIDs) in Nigeria. To achieve our vision, we intend to continuously implement impactful grassroot solutions, empower change makers, and educate community members to increase support for PWIDs.

The deployment of the ID4I solution is structured to scale up identification enrollment of the PWID population in Nigeria, targeting the registration of 200,000-450,000 PWIDs yearly, which is essential to their inclusion. Following the achievement of the pilot year, we plan to continue establishing other partnerships with grant bodies, corporations, government agencies, special centers in continuous years to achieve successful registration of at least seventy percent of the estimated 3.2 million PWIDs in Nigeria.

Successful identification and registration PWIDs will be transformational as it will drive solution targeted projects that will provide information and drive their inclusion in various financial, educational, social services. Thereby promoting and fostering access to inclusive services that will improve the standard of living of this vulnerable group while achieving global sustainable goals.

Our goal of empowering people with intellectual disabilities with identification that will potentially drive inclusion and receipt of supplementary support from the government and the public, is fraught with economic, political, technological challenges.

• Economic Challenges: Pioneering and implementing any program requires adequate resources. As a nonprofit, acquiring sustainable means of funding to scale the solution, especially transportation of mobile registration teams to various communities, across the nation will be necessary.
• Political Challenges: The solution requires working in varying communities. Each implementing community has its own unique and orthodox practices. Achieving adequate governing support in each community will aid implementation success.
• Human Resource Challenges: The ID4I solution is designed to eliminate the barriers to accessing ID at the pre-registration, registration, and post-registration phases. This is achievable with the provision of adequately trained human capital to support each phase in the communities.
• Technology Challenges: Implementation of an effective upgrade to existing technology to maintain an efficient and accurate database on PWIDs. The support of local government and the national ID agency is paramount to the success of the solution.
• Cultural Challenges: In some parts of the country, women and girls are encumbered with childcare and household chores, and in some areas may require the permission of a male family member to participate.
• Social Challenges: Fear of societal stigma exists where family members of people with ID avoid bringing their wards to public gatherings to avoid perceived shame and discrimination by community members and so may discourage participation. 

The following opportunities are ways we intend to create advantages that will help with overcoming the outlined challenges:

• Economic Challenges:
  • Create innovative fundraising techniques to cover various cost items especially logistics and supply
  • Strategically establish sustainable partnerships with individuals, organizations, and government whose interest and goals align
• Political Challenges:
  • Proactive community leader engagement in program development to ensure corporation, efficiency, and sustainability.
  • Persistent messaging leveraging the power of storytelling to educate, change attitudes and perceptions of leaders and community members.
• Human Resource Challenges:
  • Strengthen the capacity of mobile registration professionals to drive inclusion through continuous engagement and training to ensure ability to serve the target population
  • Promoting volunteerism as a tool for human resource support, coaching, and inclusion advocacy
• Technology Challenges:
  • Continuous technology upgrade to maintain an updated database
  • Improve technology to allow offline capability and effective synchronization to ensure data reports shared with our global network, organizations, and government to create opportunities for people with ID in Nigeria are accurate and reliable.
• Cultural Challenges:
  • Messaging on the importance and benefits of identification for all family members and encouragement to make it a family affair, taking into consideration community adaptations required such as creation of separate centers for male and female.
• Social Challenges:
  • Continuous enlightenment of what intellectual disability is and dispelling of myths, alongside messaging on the importance and benefits of identification.

Not Applicable

The estimated number of people who will be working on the planning, coordination, implementation, monitoring and control of the ID4I solution in the pilot year are as follows: 

Full time staff: 2 

Part time staff: 8 

Volunteers: 1000 

Mobile Registration consultants: 150

The human capital strength of a total of approximately 1160 people, will be the yearly estimated human resource working to ensure effective and efficient delivery of project deliverables. 

Special Olympics Nigeria is committed to long-term, transformational change. For 17 years, we have consistently delivered programs in sports, healthcare, and empowerment in 28 states in Nigeria. Over the years, we have established a strong trustworthy relationship with this group, their family and community members.

We have strong organizational governance and program management processes and are equipped operationally and financially to ensure our programs achieve the intended results, and are delivered within the specified timeframe and budget, while ensuring that resources are properly allocated and managed. Some programs we have successfully implemented include:

• Skillz for Life (2015-Present): Sponsored by The ExxonMobil foundation and supported by Laureus Foundation, the program provides education and free malaria and HIV testing to People with Intellectual Disabilities and their family members. The program has provided over 15,000 mosquito nets and impacted over 22,000 beneficiaries.
• Sports for Hope (2019): Sponsored by the Embassy of France in Nigeria, the program promoted inclusion through sports training and information sessions that reinforced values that improved health and quality of life of 611 youth and 1000 family members.
• Unified Sports Program (2019-2020): The ESPN sponsored program helped to combat stereotypes about people with ID by bringing 587 people with and without intellectual disabilities to learn and play sports together.

SO Nigeria project staff are passionate and highly skilled to ensure project performance indicators are SMARTT (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound and Trackable), and data collection is comprehensive and objective to effectively analyze delivery of project.

Ministry of Education: We work with the Ministry of Education to ensure participation of public school students in our organized programming. 

State Universal Board of Education (SUBEB): The partnership with SUBEB gives us the authority to specifically provide and tailor programming for special and inclusive school students. 

National Institute of Sports (NIS): The NIS supports us with provision of sports facilities and technical professionals at favorable terms as needed. 

Child Protection Network: Our partnership with CPN provides staff, volunteers with training and increased awareness on child protection system framework policies, guidelines, reporting channels and access to justice.

Local Government and Community Leaders: We partner with local leaders to achieve the needed support for the implementation of our varying program activities. 

National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS): The partnership established with NHIS is to empower PWIDs, their family and community members with knowledge of the available public health insurance program.   

ExxonMobil Foundation - there is a 5 years ongoing partnership with the foundation as sponsors of the Skillz for Life project across various states in the country

Globally, history has shown that people hold misconceptions and negative attitudes towards people with intellectual disabilities (PWIDs). Hence, Special Olympic Nigeria (SO Nigeria), is committed to creating real, transformative, and sustainable change, through the promotion of inclusive communities for PWIDs.

We provide grassroot programming solutions in health, sport, and capacity building to fight the stigma, and change attitudes towards PWIDs. With implementation in 28 out of the 36 states in Nigeria, we have impacted over 28,000 locally registered PWIDs through the provision of local and international sport training and competition opportunities, free health screenings, malaria, and HIV testing community drives. Over 22,000 family and community members have also been empowered through our programming to develop a strong trust-based relationship with PWIDs and their support system.

We accomplish these goals by raising the resources needed to implement tailored programming solutions to the needs of PWIDs. We sustain our programming,  by employing strategies such as maintaining a highly trained workforce that promote high performance work culture, providing grassroot community based programming that promote community involvement and advocacy for the inclusion movement; and effectively managing all relevant stakeholders to enable continuous promotion of the Special Olympics brand.

The ID4I solution is part of our strategic vision to increase quality of life and champion the inclusion of PWIDs through ID registration to drive recognition by governing authorities for assistantships they deserve. All this enables us in achieving our vision of inclusion, and the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

SO Nigeria achieves sustainable funding from the following main sources:

• Grant and Aid opportunities: Creatively approaching opportunities whose goals align with the goals of the organization, to obtain funding that enables mobilizing of impactful programming.
• Partnership Opportunities: Leveraging opportunities to establish partnership with public, private, governmental, and non-governmental organizations for monetary and in-kind support to enable the achievement of aligned goals.
• Crowdsourcing Opportunities: Utilizing innovative business models, solution focused, and technology driven methods to accelerate monetary support from individuals in various platforms, to address social issues.

We are yet to raise fund for the solution

The estimated total cost of implementation is $1.2 million. This amount is estimated to cover the various activities in different locations across Nigeria. The expected yearly expense for project implementation is estimated at $137,700. We intend to raise the estimated funds for the ID4I solution through partnerships with various organizations, and grants.

Expenses Budget Narrative:

Salaries and Benefits

2 Full time staff - 100% assignment to the project @ $6,000 per staff per annum

Total = $12,000

Consultants

Transportation allowance for mobile registration consultant - $6,500

Monitoring and evaluation consultant @$5,000/annum

Stipend for 1000 volunteers for information sessions, registration coordination and data input @ $ 35,000 ($35/volunteer/annum)

Total = $46,500

Technology

Upgrade for ID4I database @ $10,000

Hardware to be used by volunteers for data entry (20 laptops, 20 tablets) @ $14,000

Production of educational videos, Guides, Visual aids, and other learning resources to target 3,200,000 individuals @ $ 10,000

Total - $34,000

Publicity

Radio, TV, internet & online advertisements @ $4800/annum

Communication (telephone, mobile data) to coordinate program and sync collected field data @ $ 5000/annum

Promotion materials i.e. banners, brochure, souvenirs @ $3400/annum

Total - $13,200

Logistics & Supplies

Transportation Allowance for 10 Project staff (community engagement) @ $12,000/annum

Hygiene supplies (Hand sanitizers, face masks, disinfectants) @ $20,000

Total - $32,000

Grand total -    $137,700

The battle to end discrimination of people with intellectual disabilities is far from over, despite the disability bill being passed into law in 2019. There has been little to no record of implementation of this bill. Hence, this project is a step closer, a big leap towards the end of this discrimination. However, this unique approach to enable them to have a means of identification is still fraught with various barriers which winning the global prize would enable us to overcome.

The economic challenges can be directly reduced through the global prize, as funds from this can enable the creation of awareness and educational material on the benefits and importance of identification, the training and mobile deployment of ID registration staff and centers and the collation and synchronization of the information collected. This prize will enable us to effectively track the solution for optimization and eventual scale up across the country, thereby creating a replicable solution that can be used globally.

With a solution that supports the enrolment and collection of the identity card, people with intellectual disabilities can have increased access to various services and opportunities that improve their lives including the much needed social  support at a time such as the current pandemic. It will also enable financial inclusion as without a unique National Identification Number, it is no longer possible for one to make financial transactions in Nigeria. Therefore, possessing a National ID card will open many doors across industries for people with ID. 

Having an authentic digital management system for the data of people with intellectual disabilities is very important in delivering targeted and sustainable interventions to improve the quality of life of people with ID in Nigeria. Currently, there is no database that provides insights into the population, locations, age, and other demographics about people with ID in the country. This poses great limitations for the government, social enterprises and non-profit organizations when trying to tailor impact solutions to people in this category. Hence, a need for us to partner with a reputable software agency in developing a unique and secured digital platform that serves our purpose of collecting and managing the data. The platform will also provide the public with data and statistics in the form of text, infographics, charts etc. This can help in driving government aid and policy decisions.

National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) - A partnership with the national agency responsible for identification is crucial to this solution as their cooperation is needed to reach the project goals. By having available, dedicated registration staff who will undergo the special training on how to serve people with intellectual disabilities. Also, with red tapes and bureaucracy associated with government agencies, a partnership will ease various stages of the project including mobile deployment of registration centers.