Welcome to the pages of the site of the Association of young disabled persons «APPAREL» of Kaliningrad Region, the westernmost region of Russia. We hope that you will find here interesting and useful information.
The site has been developed and is administrated by young disabled persons. The site was created for disabled persons and their nearest people, those who help disabled persons by call of duty or by dictate of heart.
About our organization
"Ignorance, neglect, prejudice and fear are those social factors that in the course of the whole mankind development history led to the isolation of disabled persons, hampered their development and improvement."
The UN General Assembly (Resolution 46/96) "Standard rules for securing equal opportunities for disabled persons". December 1993.
The Kaliningrad Association of young disabled persons «APPAREL» is a Russian nongovernmental, social, youth, charitable, nonprofit organization. It has been existing in the westernmost region of Russia since 1999. APPAREL works in favor of young disabled persons in the field of social protection, education, protection of the rights and in other socially useful lines.
The activity of APPAREL is based upon the democracy principles: voluntaryism and equality, self-administration and legitimacy. The basic lines:
- Increasing the activity of young (14 to 29 years of age) disabled persons, promoting their wide participation in public, social, cultural and economic life of the society;
- Improving the public opinion in regard to disabled persons and their organizations;
- Supporting the socially useful initiatives in the social field and increasing the role of the civil society for the purpose of a stable improvement of the life quality of inhabitants of Kaliningrad Region, Russia, and a sustainable development of the region.
The funds of APPAREL are formed for the account of financing by the local administration, commercial companies, private persons and foreign investments.
Activity principles of APPAREL:
Organizationindependence. An independent legal entity established solely for charitable purposes and not depending of influence of any one person, or organization, or state.
Transparency. The organization builds its activity of the basis of open and clear procedures, accessibility of financial and contents reports, openness of internal processes and used technologies.
Constancy. The activity of the organization members and a sustainable influx of new energetic young supporters enables to plan our work on a long-term basis in accordance with the needs of persons supported as well as lead a competent policy for attracting funds from benefactors.
Support from the local community. The organization actively involves into the field of its activity different population groups, organizations and institutions (for participation in events and programs carried out as partners, benefactors and beneficiaries etc).
Innovation. The organization constantly looks for and actively uses the advanced experience in its work. This allows more actively to help the needing people, better work with benefactors, partner organizations and the community in whole.
Today, the Kaliningrad APPAREL is a modern service structure for disabled children and youth, that creates a high-quality social product demanded by them.
The APPAREL activists emphasize the three most important activity lines as follows:
- Contributing to the improvement of the disabled youth’ life quality by providing them with consulting, educational and informational services.
- Development of the social partnership, arrangement of the interaction between general public, business and authorities. Development and implementation of mechanisms of public participation in decision-making at every level.
- Improving the people’s attitude towards disabled persons by conducting public campaigns of nonpolitical and nonprofit nature by means of the social advertising: videos and audios, visual information, mass media advertising (newspapers, magazines etc), printed matter and souvenirs, as well as public relations activity.
The Kaliningrad APPAREL activists are young people having practical work experience in the nonprofit sector. Many of them were educated at Russian and foreign training and resource centers.
The main distinctive feature of APPAREL is that the entire work is planned and preformed by young disabled persons themselves. Therefore the organization work results constitute the history of their success first of all!
