Meet Ian Banda, a 25 year old youth with a physical disability. He was born with muscular dystrophy and spent most of his childhood attending physiotherapy at Archie Hinchcliffe Disability Intervention and later went to school.
Ian has not let the disability define or limit him from realizing his full potential. He completed his schooling in 2015. Whilst at Kabulonga Boys Secondary School, his leadership potential was seen and was appointed as a prefect and was also an active member of Youth Alive Club. He has great interest in public speaking and is also passionate about the rights of children and youths with disabilities and speaks against Gender Based Violence.
As a young African leader he was selected to be part of the Mandela Washington Fellowship program which is highly prestigious and competitive where he participated in the University of Minnesota’s Public Management Program.
The program focused on public management and leadership across a wide range of domains, including policy, leadership, and networking where he strongly advocated for the rights of children and with youth disabilities. As a Mandela Washington Fellow he also had the privilege to meet and dine with different government officials in the U.S who were in his field of disability and human rights and he also had the privilege to present his POEM in Washington DC titled: EQUAL RIGHTS, EQUAL OPPORTUNITY!!!!
Ever since he returned he has continued his advocacy work on disability and human rights to go to the media to promote issues pertaining to this and he has also partnered with ZICTA in promoting ICT for people living with disabilities. He is now an alumnus of Young African Leaders initiative Southern Africa cohort 13 as a graduate in civic leadership where he joined 140 other young leaders from all the SADC regions at the University Of South Africa School Of Business Leadership’s Yali Regional Centre.
He is currently studying Insurance at the Zambia College of Pension and Insurance Trust where he is pursuing his Diploma in lnsurance with the support of AHDI / Stichting Lilliane Foundation.
He is a member of the Youth Equality Disability Pressure Group under Zambia Association of Parents for Children with Disabilities and also a member of the Zambia Disability HIV programme on the GBV project in Kanyama compound.
He was also awarded a training in UK London under Leonard Cheshire Disability as a youth pilot trainer to train youths with disabilities on how to write up their challenging stories in line with SDG 3, 4 and 8.
As we can all see, disability is not inability!