Advancing Disability Justice in the Caribbean
Our Mission
We aim to advance disability justice across Barbados and the Caribbean by confronting inequity, mediating conflict, and holding institutions accountable. We equip organizations and communities with transformative conflict resolution tools, develop programmes that close critical gaps, and create bold, accessible spaces where disabled people lead, challenge, and reshape systems of power.
Our Vision
We envision an interdependent Caribbean where disabled people live with full dignity, autonomy, and power, where our leadership shapes communities, our voices drive decision-making, and our rights are fully realized. In this future, accountability is the norm, access is non-negotiable, and every system is transformed by and for disabled people.
Our Integration of Disability Justice as a Framework for Organizing
At Caged Bird, Rise, we organize through the framework of Disability Justice. Developed by disabled activists and articulated by Sins Invalid in 2005, Disability Justice recognizes that disability is not experienced in isolation. Our lives are shaped by the many identities we hold and the systems we navigate, including race, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, and culture. Disability exists within these broader social realities, and any justice movement must account for them.
While disability rights movements have been instrumental in securing legal protections, accessibility measures, and recognition under the law, Disability Justice asks us to move beyond rights alone. It calls us to center the lived experiences, leadership, and wisdom of those most impacted by oppression, while addressing the root causes of exclusion and inequality.
As a Caribbean disability justice organization, we recognize that disabled people do not exist apart from our families, communities, histories, and relationships. We reject the notion that independence is the ultimate measure of human worth. Instead, we embrace interdependence—the understanding that we all rely on one another, and that our collective wellbeing is strengthened through mutual care, shared responsibility, and community accountability.
Disability Justice reminds us that liberation is not an individual achievement. No one rises alone. Our freedom is deeply connected to the freedom of others, and meaningful change requires us to work collectively toward a future where disabled people can live with dignity, belonging, self-determination, and joy. Through this framework, Caged Bird, Rise is committed to building communities that not only include disabled people but are transformed by our leadership, our knowledge, and our visions for a more just world.