“Fifteen years ago I became wheelchair-bound. That’s the way it is: yesterday I was a healthy guy, and today my elderly parents are taking care of me. To me it seemed that I was Ukraine’s first invalid. In any case, the experience of my predecessors had no bearing on me. I felt guilty about the time when I was healthy and wasn’t interested at all in the problems of the disabled. I realized that other able-bodied people would not take interest in me either. These are our own problems. So I began to think about how we could solve them,” says Mykola Podrezan, a wheelchair-bound film director, who is the chairman of “Ukrainsky IP Foundation,” an international charitable foundation for the disabled. The letters IP stand for “informational support” in Ukrainian, i.e., the foundation teaches people how to survive. Today, on the International Day of Disabled Persons, we are going to talk about those who have survived not only in the biological but also in the spiritual, professional, and humanitarian sense of the word, those who say “we are the same as you” except for their physical condition.
Any expert will tell you that the main problems faced by disabled persons are barriers, lack of money, and unemployment. Podrezan and his group of associates believe that the main problem is lack of information. So they began collecting and distributing information for the disabled. They answered letters, dispensed advice, and then began to publish a booklet containing legislative acts and other indispensable documents as well as positive examples, such as the life stories of successful invalids, etc. Today pressure groups are working in many big cities. “Suppose somebody injures his spine in Kryvy Rih, as I once did, and a surgeon gives him our phone number and says: here are some good people, who will tell you how to survive.” Podrezan says.
A disabled person can live in different ways. There are two main options: you can sit in your wheelchair and complain about the lack of attention, money, and work or you draw attention to yourself, look for a job, and earn money. Everyone knows about the work-related problems of invalids, for even able-bodied people have difficulties finding a job, let alone someone with limited physical abilities. But even those who have found employment face a host of other problems. The main headache is how to get to your work place in a wheelchair, when transport and the vast majority of buildings are not equipped with ramps. “There may be a ramp, but you can’t go down it,” says Natalia Skrypka, chief secretary of the National Assembly of Disabled Persons. “Have you seen those two ‘rails’ on the subway stairs? It is not only difficult but extremely dangerous to wheel down them. Old women barely manage to move their rolling bags down these rails, and it is even more difficult for wheelchairs.” Skrypka says that most ramps in Ukrainian apartment buildings are unserviceable: they are slippery or too steep. Indispensable handrails are either missing or, absurdly enough, end a few steps before the ramp begins.
It is clear why most invalids do not even try to look for a job and have serious complaints about the state. But Podrezan is convinced that the main problem of the disabled is apathy. “In terms of legislation, the state has done almost everything that it can for us. Now it is up to us to defend our rights and ourselves. Yes, there are zillions of jobless invalids. But do they try to find work? Let them show me their diaries! Looking straight into my eyes, no employer can reject me because I am disabled: he knows I can sue him. And I know many disabled people who have found a job. As for ramps, you have to struggle for them, too. Five people in wheelchairs should gather in front of a building without a ramp and demand to be carried up! A couple of people will wreck their backs, but a ramp will be installed. This applies not only to administrative buildings but also restaurants. I want to go to your restaurant, so let the waiters carry me in. They won’t dare refuse.”
Similar advice comes from the Ukrainsky IP Foundation. This advice is for disabled people who are free of the “you have to” mentality and really want to work. Wheelchair beauty contests were a real breakthrough. The first competition of this kind was organized in 1994 among girls who were staying at a health center. Not all the girls were keen to take part in the Miss Health Center contest. “Most of them were too shy, but we still talked some girls into doing it,” Podrezan remembers. “One very beautiful young woman refused pointblank to take part. After the contest, which went swimmingly, she came up to me and apologized. She said that she used to think these contests were a blasphemy, buffoonery, and humiliation of wheelchair-bound people. But when she saw the girls, who were not embarrassed and got applause and attracted enchanted glances, she wished she had taken part. It really is a sight for sore eyes, when girls in wheelchairs are dancing, singing, and telling you how great they are.”
