The Evangelical Reformed Church of Christ was founded by the Sudan United Mission in 1916. Today, under national leadership, it is still committed to evangelism and training believers in discipleship, while on the medical side it runs a comprehensive health centre in Alushi with 30 dispensaries, and a training school for community health extension workers.

In 1997 the church launched a community based rehabilitation (CBR) project, following the example of Jesus who sent this message to John the Baptist: 'The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the good news is preached to the poor'. The project aims to identify disabled people of all ages and to encourage and empower them to take part in the normal life of their family and community. It also aims to share the love and good news of Jesus with them. Priorities include:

• Arranging for the vaccination of children. In Nigeria nationally only 27% of children were receiving polio vaccination, hence the disease is still endemic and is the largest cause of disability in children.
• Providing mobility aids for polio patients who can only crawl. Local craftsmen are trained to make callipers, skateboards to sit on and hand driven bicycles. Parents need motivating to persist with the use of callipers.
• Encouraging parents of disabled children to send them to the local school.
• Supporting teachers who had accepted disabled children into their class. The CBR workers found that only 10 of the 62 disabled children were attending primary school.
• Providing medical eye services and spectacles. Eye problems formed over half the CBR work.
• Encouraging disabled adults to earn a cash income in some way.

Initially we employed Namo Malle, an experienced health worker and a church elder, to supervise the project. He worked alongside me for a year and visited other CBR projects to catch the vision of what could be done, then we employed eight local people as fieldworkers. They were all in their early twenties and had trained at the ERCC School of Health and Technology in Alushi.

Several of these young people have relatives who are disabled, which gives them a natural empathy with their clients. They were given three weeks training on disability issues, especially identifying eye problems, then we sent them to join church outreach teams in the villages. Each fieldworker was given a bicycle to visit disabled clients. Over the first months they all completed a Theological Education by Extension (TEE) course entitled 'Following Jesus'.

I quickly learned that our clients were the experts. Our most important role was to listen. This was brought home to me by one 50-year-old man who had had polio as a child. Despite having to crawl from place to place he earns his living mending shoes. I offered him a skateboard or a bike at 10% of its production cost, but was rebuked: 'What good are they? I have a wife I haven't paid for yet!' Paying for his wife was the priority for him and for his wife's relatives who would no doubt have made him sell any mobility aid he got to pay off his debt.

Many families had integrated their disabled member into a household routine, but most of the disabled remain under-utilised. Our task was to assess and listen and be a catalyst for positive change, perhaps helping with a wheelchair so she could move out of the compound. Supporting the family would enable this girl to reach her full potential.

Jane Tompsett is a physiotherapist who was employed by Tear Fund to work in central Nigeria with the ERCC from 1994 to 1997. She is now doing an MSc in Community-Based Disability Studies with the help of an MMA grant.