Transforming Communities for Inclusion (TCI) Global
About our organization: Transforming Communities for Inclusion (TCI) is a post-CRPD movement of persons with psychosocial disabilities and its cross-disability supporters. It is a membership-based global OPD (Organization of persons with disabilities) with a presence in over 40 countries spread across various sub regions of South Asia, SEA, Pacific, East Asia, MENA region, East Africa and West Africa. TCI also has a small set of members from the US, Europe, Australia and Canada.
Our vision: TCI envisions the full inclusion and effective participation of all persons with psychosocial disabilities, users and survivors of psychiatry, mad persons, persons with intersectional and neurodiverse identities, and all persons who self identify as a person facing high restriction of participation and exclusion due to attributions of ‘mental disorders’.
Our purpose: Over the years, TCI has sustained its focus on the Right to live independently in the community and be included (Article 19 of the CRPD). This has many different strategies and opportunities in different country contexts and we have engaged our members to define their advocacy based on national experiences.
Our Mission:
- To provide a global platform for people with psychosocial disabilities to create a common vision for advocacy for our inclusion at the national level.
- To develop status, white and strategy papers for advocacy actions with respect to laws, policies, and institutional relationships in the region, to facilitate an enabling environment, for the full inclusion of people with psychosocial disabilities.
- To mobilize persons with psychosocial disabilities and cross disability supporters, to advocate for our inclusion within disability and development through well formed program instruments including Fellowships, Microgrants, Country Missions, Multi-stakeholder platforms, etc.
- To support and encourage multi-national, multi-regional, south-south and north south collaborations and to facilitate and participate in sub-regional, regional thematic consultations, plenaries and global plenaries of DPOs of persons with psychosocial disabilities and our cross disability supporters.
- To lead, partake of and contribute to global advocacy on the full realization of our human rights, particularly Article 19 (Living independently and being included in the community), by collaborating and influencing various INGOs, think tanks, co-operations, academia, and efforts by UN agencies, for transforming all development sectors and actors for our inclusion.
- To envision and enable human rights-based, CRPD compliant community mental health and inclusion services, for persons with psychosocial disabilities, by capacity building of DPOs in the creation of violence-free social habitats, “building back better”, community support systems and expanding choice in the realm of wellbeing services and inclusion practices.
About our work:
As TCI, we envision the full inclusion and effective participation of all persons with psychosocial disabilities, users and survivors of psychiatry, mad persons, persons with intersectional and neurodiverse identities, and all persons who self-identify as a person facing high restriction of participation and exclusion due to attributions of ‘mental disorders’. TCI has sustained its focus on the Right to live independently in the community and be included (Article 19 of the CRPD). We are strong advocates of abolishing institutions, coercion and legal incapacity in the guise of mental health laws with a focus on community inclusion and strengthening DPO movements globally. We offer a variety of instruments for our members to support them in becoming national leaders and establish national level OPDs through fellowships, microgrants, DPO support grants. We also conduct country missions and subregional meetings, to mobilize our movement of persons with psychosocial disabilities across the globe. Multistakeholder meetings are also organized as we believe in having dialogue and discussions with a variety of stakeholders for our effective inclusion in development agendas. TCI is also extensively engaged with UN Human Rights Mechanisms through involvement in OHCHR reports, Special Rapporteur’s reports; in academic engagements via offering courses at universities, organizing webinars with academic partners and works with UN and allied agencies (such as UNFPA, ILO, UNESCAP, UN Women etc.) by reviewing and submitting feedback on their reports and advocating with them for our inclusion in high policy circle agendas.