Dasuns

1. Contextual Background

Uganda has registered significant progress in addressing poverty since the last two decades, with the national poverty rate decreasing from 56 in 1992 to 21.4% in 2016/17.  With USD$ 27699 million GDP, and USD$ 646.2 GDP per capita; Uganda, scored a low human development index of 0.493, and was ranked 163 out of 188 countries and territories, according to the 2016 Human Development Report. Overall, 10% of the population lived in chronic poverty in 2015/16; and were likely to be in households located in rural areas (12%), households whose heads had no formal education (23%), and households existing in the formally political unstable Northern region (24%) of Uganda. With the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 however, the economic progress is facing disruptions . The effects will unfortunately most likely be felt greatly by the poorest and most vulnerable communities including those with disabilities.

1.1 Disability and Poverty

The National Household Survey 2009/2010 found that poverty rates in households with a person with disability were 30% higher than in households without a person with disability. The 2016 DHS  data also indicates that people with disabilities are more likely to be living in a poor household than people without disabilities (57% compared to 45%) . The causes of extreme poverty amongst people with disabilities are attributed to lack of access to education; lack of completion of education for those able to access it; resultant lack of skills and competencies required for employment or livelihood activities; inadequate access to disability support services; and the deep rooted negative cultures. Research in 2016 found that the ‘incomes of persons with disabilities were often less reliable and stable than those of persons without disabilities’, which increases their vulnerability to shocks.

1.2 Government Intervention 

Government of Uganda demonstrates commitment to enabling inclusion of women and men with disabilities through the creation and/or implementation of inclusive legislation/policy. Uganda’s Vision 2040, puts emphasis on reducing inequalities among social groups; and in the development plans, disability is recognized as a cross-cutting issue, relevant to all sectors at national and local Government levels. The National Development Plan (NDP III) (2020/21 – 2024/25), prioritizes the need to increase the productivity and wellbeing of the population through providing social assistance to vulnerable groups including persons with disabilities. It further highlights the need to facilitate usage of ICT in national development partly through digitizing, achieving and commercializing local content for persons with disabilities. The National Disability-Inclusive Planning Guidelines (NPA, 2017) also advocate for approaches that address disability-mainstreaming and disability-specific activities to adequately serve persons with disabilities. The guidelines further advocate for the provision of employment support services for employees with disabilities. In addition, the National ICT Policy (2014-2019) notes that there is need to address persons with disabilities as a special group in society that can positively contribute to the growth of ICTs as well as the use of ICTs as empowerment tools in their daily activities. This is augmented by the ICT for Disability policy, 2017 whose objective is to use ICT as a measure for reducing the marginalisation of persons with disabilities and for creating equal opportunities by closing the gaps in access and use of the ICT tools.

Internationally, Uganda subscribes to the 2030 global development agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals; and is a State Party to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). While the overarching principle for the 2030 agenda is to ‘leave no one behind’; the UNCRPD articles 4.3, 32, & 33.3 stipulate the obligation of states parties to ensure the effective participation of persons with disabilities in development policies and programmes.

2 Inclusion Still Out of Reach for Persons with Disabilities

Despite government commitment to promote the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the mainstream of community life, implementation is still honoured in breach. Persons with disabilities still continue to face both stigma and discrimination leading to their limited participation in all aspects of life. Limited access to professional support services to facilitate mobility, personal assistance, access to information and communication are some of the leading challenges facing persons with disabilities and universal service access. A 2020 study report by the International Disability Alliance (IDA)  on the participation of Persons with Disabilities  in development policies and programmes showed that many development stakeholders did not meet the ‘pre-conditions’ for the effective participation of persons with disabilities . The ‘pre-conditions’ refer to reasonable accommodation needs required by persons with disabilities including sign language interpretation, personal support, among other support services.

Persons with disabilities need access to support services not only for basic day-to-day activities such as bathing, dressing and eating, but also for their effective participation in the socio-economic and political life of their communities. Although some persons with disabilities could use their friends and family networks to access support assistance, these may not be readily available due to other commitments. Besides, with this support arrangement, the autonomy of persons with disabilities is reduced as they tend to have no choice & control over the assistance they require and questions of overprotection and conflicts of interest arise. In addition, friends and family members usually lack the requisite professional expertise to address the support needs of persons with disabilities; hence, leaving them stranded and literally under house arrest. When families cannot find the required support alternatives, they get significant pressure to abandon members with disabilities or place them in segregated institutions despite the risks that characterize these institutions. Poorest families are under intense pressure as unpaid familial support affects income levels, social relationships, and well-being of households with gender implications. Women and girls are impacted most, since they are the main providers of support within households; hence, reducing their freedom and choices to pursue their own life plans.

2.1 Traditional Solutions

Institutions such as Kyambogo University and Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs) have been training professionals in sign language interpretation, live captioning, tactile communication, live personal assistance service, among others; so that they provide access to professional support services to persons with disabilities. However, accessing these professionals to provide services whenever need arises is still a challenge. Identification depends on oral inquiries about what support services, who provides and where to find support persons. Many agencies willing to serve persons with disabilities are often disappointed as they would not readily identify required support for the reasonable accommodation requests from persons with disabilities. In this way, persons with disabilities remain stranded on one hand; unable to identify professional support for their empowerment; and yet well trained professionals are looking for opportunities to apply their specialist skills on the other hand.

Dasuns facilitates access to professional support services for persons with disabilities through an online platform (Dasuns) that links professional support service providers with users.

Users are able to choose the type of support service by interacting through a digital system.

Service providers and users only need to sign up for an account once. Users can then log on to the system and request for preferred support service from available service providers within reach. The system also provides background information about the two parties involved; including brief bio data and address to help the two parties to connect.

There are two ways to sign up to become a Dasuns user. Either through Dasuns Mobile App (Android), or through Dasuns website. When you sign up, you will need to provide your full name, gender, phone contact, email address, and the preferred language. If you are a corporate user, you will in addition need your plot number and street address. For support providers, their created accounts will remain inactive until submissions are verified and approved or rejected by Dasuns Vetting Committee based on the practical interviews assigned. Potential users will need to grant access to their locations and provide a payment option which may include a credit card, debit card, or a Mobile Money account. The email address and mobile number provided have to be verified before you can start using Dasuns app.  

After signing up successfully with Dasuns, the user will then be able to showcase professional support services s/he can deliver, or request any preferred support services based on the available list of services. Our current menu is graphically displayed below.

How to Request Professional Support Services through Dasuns

If you are already signed up with Dasuns, everything takes place through the app. No cash shall be exchanged between you and the support provider, instead, the payment method you set up when you signed up with Dasuns shall be used to automatically pay your support provider when the required session is completed. Please book for your support services by following the following steps:

1. Open Dasuns app on your mobile device or access Dasuns website on your computer
2. Click on ‘Request Service’ and log into your Dasuns account
3. Inside the account, select the type of service you need (e.g. Captioning)
4. A list of professional providers of this service will be displayed with each one’s brief Biodata, location and amount chargeable
5. Select your preferred support provider by clicking on ‘Book now’
6. A customised form for selected provider will prop up where you will fill in your own Biodata, meeting date, place, starting and ending time; and then click ‘Book Now’
7. You will be required to fill in your payment method details and requested to ‘make payment’ or ‘return to home page’
8. If you click ‘make payment’, the system will process and redirect you to a page where you will put your private financial data
9. You will receive onscreen notification requesting you to confirm your payment by entering you secret codes
10. You will receive a status onscreen notification and if your payment is successful, this will be acknowledged by sending you a receipt into your e-mail
11. Payment made shall be held by Dasuns until the service session is done, upon which the app will prompt service user to either authorise payment or extend session time
12. If payment is authorised, Dasuns will automatically effect payment into service provider’s account (Wallet)
13. Dasuns app will finally request service user to rate support provider and provide feedback on quality of service

Obtaining reliable data on persons with disabilities in Uganda is a challenge due to different estimates in disability prevalence. The 2016 NHS[1] found prevalence at 12.4%[2]; reporting about 4.5 million Ugandans with one form of disability. However, the 2002 NPC had reported at least 16% of the population as having disabilities. This would translate into over 7.5 of the about million Uganda current population,[3] with over 80% (over 6 million) in need of access to support services to effectively participate in the mainstream of community life. 

It is this support gap that affects about 7 million Ugandans with disabilities that Dasuns intends to fill. Impact shall be measured by assessing how the project contributes to poverty reduction through supporting hitherto excluded citizens to access services; how it contributes to building productive livelihoods; and how the project enables citizens to live a life of security and dignity and the number of people impacted.

Many public and private sector agencies have always attributed their inadequate inclusive practices to lack or inaccessible professional disability support services. The impact of the project shall also be assessed based on the use of disability support services to facilitate the inclusion of persons with disabilities in mainstream programmes.

Dasuns’ Platform is configured to capture demographic data in regard to the user history. Such user analytics will be extracted and used as proxy for impact, disaggregated by gender, and disability types as possible variables.  In addition, targeted surveys will be sent out to registered users with pre-determined questions that would be used to understand the impact of this intervention

[1] National Housing Survey

[2] Ibid

[3] https://www.worldometers.info/...

[4] AMwA, 2020. The state of social protection in Uganda in response to Covid-19: A Technical brief. Akina Mama wa Afrika(AMwA).

Our co-found and CEO,
Ronald Kasule uses a wheelchair and requires access to personal support
services for most of his strenuous work. He tells a story where back in
the days, he was denied entry into a Secondary School of his choice on
account of having no access to support services. He had attended a
special primary school where he worked exceedingly hard and won a
district education scholarship to join secondary school. On reporting
however, the Head teacher thought he could not manage alone and his
admission depended on securing the services of a support person. The
only person available was his Mother who still could not help, given
other responsibilities at home. Although he succeeded in getting
placement elsewhere in a private institution, he lost his hard-earned
public education scholarship in despair.   

With more interactions among fellow persons with disabilities, Ronald learnt that it was not about him, but a general challenge hindering the effective inclusion of persons with disabilities. As more personal experiences and challenges emerged, the idea of starting Diversity Ability Support Network System (Dasuns) was conceived.

We have held several design workshops with Organisations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) and Support service providers to better understand their respective challenges at hand. Valuable feedback has been earned and being incorporated at every stage of development.

As a young entity, we are struggling to build a high impact organisation that can ably meet the service needs of our ever expanding clientele base. We hope Solve could give us a hand by creating connections to mentors that could support us in developing and refining:

Business model (e.g. product-market fit, strategy & development)

Financial (e.g. improving accounting practices, pitching to investors)

Legal or Regulatory Matters

Public Relations (e.g. branding/marketing strategy, social and global media)

Product / Service Distribution (e.g. expanding client base)

Technology (e.g. software or hardware, web development/design, data analysis, etc.)

Traditional approaches have mainly depended on oral inquiries about what support services, who provides and where to find professional support persons. This has not only been a challenge to support users, but also for trained support persons looking for opportunities to work. The innovativeness of solution is that it addresses the gap by leveraging technology to provide digital access to professional assistive support services where persons with disabilities and allied professional service providers can choose the type of support service by interacting with the digital system. In this way, service providers and users only need to sign up for individual accounts once, login to the system and display their professional support service area of expertise; or request for preferred support service from available service providers nearby respectively

The solution has revolutionized the support service (care) sector at least in Uganda. There is growing shift away from the traditional family based care support (due to its associated challenges) to a formal professional support system. There is now streamlined demand for professional support providers from development practitioners would want to support their staff and/or clients with disabilities. This has increased competitiveness among support providers and the quality of service and improved their income.

1. Empower persons with disabilities, their families and friends, with an alternative support service system to allow them time for their improved welfare in the 3 years;

2. Create and implement a well-functioning web-based digital support service system in Uganda within the next two (2) years;

3. Create and implement a well-functioning mobile-based digital support service system in Uganda within the next two (2) years;

4. Facilitate refresher trainings for at least 300 support persons in the next 2 years;

5. Sign up at least 90% of trained support persons on Dasuns platform;

6. Conduct user campaigns for signing up on Dasuns platform at least twice a year;

7. Support development partners' efforts for inclusion by establishing at least one (1) in-call Centre in Uganda on matters related to recruitment of professional support services for persons with disabilities by end of the third year;

8. Create at least 1 supplementary support service system (e.g accessible transport system) for persons with disabilities in Uganda within the next five (5) years.  

A web-based digital system created;

A mobile-based system created;

At least 70 support persons have attained refresher training;

At least 75 support persons signed up on Dasuns platform;

Number of users signed up on the platform;

Number of call centres established;

Number of user campaigns conducted;

Number of partners supported;

Increased inclusion practices among partners;

Improved livelihoods among persons with disabilities and their families.

If we designed an Online support service system, then we can host all professionals trained to provide different support services and users. This digital interaction between support providers and users will lead to more effective inclusion and participation of persons with disabilities in mainstream development programs and policies on a basis equal with others; because all support users who sign up on the platform will have the opportunity to access different support service options suitable for their support requirements.

Our Solution leverages technology to create both web and mobile application which makes it easy for professional support providers, persons with disabilities, public and private sector agencies link and interact with the professional support providers. we also have a digital database where all information collected from the system users is stored online and can be accessed and managed by the system admin at anytime. This in particular eases monitoring and impact evaluation of the solution.

We want to transform from Python Django to Django-Rest-API to facilitate the integration of the Web and Mobile Application and allow other third party functionalities

However, in the situation when a person with disability does not have a smart device, her/she can use a phone call and the admin checks the available support in the system and make a booking according to the specifications given by the user.

Our team is carefully constituted with persons with disabilities, women and men. We have persons with disabilities to represent users; a person to represent support providers; and others. We have also used co-design workshops to ensure that we gain feedback from more target users. Our future recruitment policy strictly respects diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Persons with Disabilities and/or corporate users shall be expected to pay for the service of professional support providers via the web application or mobile app. A commission (as a small percentage of the service cost) shall be deducted to become part of Dasuns revenue. However, we shall continue to seek grants to improve the service delivery, and we shall lobby government to consider providing the services to persons with disabilities as part of the social protection, hence, gaining income through service contract to government. 

We have so far received funding from the U.S. State Department the Association of University Centers on Disabilities (AUCD); we have also had some grant funding confirmed from the United States African Development Foundation (USADF) in partnership with CITI Foundation.