Inclusive Project DPro for Visually Impaired

Author: Cristiano Moura

Inspired by the democratization of information and access to management tools provided by the Project DPro Guide, Cristiano Moura developed a method to train the visually impaired in project management, specifically in the initial phase of the Project Life Cycle. This method proposes that the visually impaired can design projects, improve management, attract resources and be recognized professionals of the social development sector, after all, now they can see how to make a good justification of their projects and design structured projects, taking into account the tools of Identification and Design of Design, as Tree of Problems, Tree of Objectives and mainly the Logical Framework.

And how could that be possible? Eyes of a visually impaired person are also in their hands, so the idea was to enable them to experience the tools through touch. And why? Because there was a problem that in an expositive class would be extremely complicated to work with this audience. So, some questions guided the creation of this method, for example: “how to explain and make visually impaired that at the time of justifying the project we would have to use a problem tree?” “How could we make them understand that in roots, trunks and branches, we would have causes, central problem and effects?”

For us to see it is easy, but how to adapt this language to someone who can not see a tree? How do you make them understand that the goal tree “would feed” the Logical Framework? Make them understand that from the branches we have the impacts, from the trunk the goal, from the roots the results, finally: How could they compose a Logical Framework if they have never seen a chart with 16 gaps? Many were the questions to think about solutions.

All this scenario motivated the implementation of a pilot project with visually impaired people, so the didactic part can not focus only on expository class, but on pedagogical materials that had the premise of physical contact (touch-object). So for this work was used a small wooden tree with strings, which in the manual contact they could “try”, identifying the branches, trunks and roots, in the case of roots we use strings at the foot of the tree. For the Logical Framework, a table cardboard and popsicle sticks. one of the products of this workshop, for example, was a logical framework in braille. These didactic resources contributed in the end to having a Logical Framework written in Braille.

• At the end of the experience brought the reflections:
  The participants with visual deficiency said that the didactic resources used were fundamental to understand the justification and the design of a project;
• There were participants without Visual Impairment and for them these resources facilitate learning even of the seeker;
• People with visual impairment can develop Project DPro training with excellence;
• The didactic resources are simple and do not need high financial investments;

Finally, this experience has shown that teaching resources are fundamental to the learning process of the target audience and also that this target audience demonstrates an immeasurable potential of cultural sensitivity for better project writing, that is, it manages to capture things that we see we do not have the ability to see!