About TCI

Transforming Communities for Inclusion (TCI) is a global Organisation of Persons with Psychosocial Disabilities [an OPD]. TCI forecasts a future in which all human rights and full freedoms of persons with psychosocial disabilities are realized.

We contribute to the realization of the CRPD by elaborating on the pedagogy and the practice of Article 19 of the CRPD (Right to Living Independently and being included in Communities). We advocate for the practice of Inclusion and dream to see it manifest in all national policies and laws of the world. TCI advocacy message has been, “Inclusive of mental health, but not exclusively so”.

About the #WhatWENeed Campaign

The #WhatWENeed campaign is a yearly campaign organized and run by TCI, between the months of October to December. The campaign starts with the International Mental Health Week (10th October) and ends with the International Human Rights Day in early December. This specific dateline also signifies the transition we want to see, from ‘Mental health’, to ‘Human Rights’.

For the origin of the #WhatWENeed Campaign, please visit (Hyper Link).

The campaign is a community platform for reframing the debate from “mental health” to “inclusion” and to transition towards full CRPD compliance. The Campaign has attempted to reclaim the World Mental Health Week to truly represent voices from the grassroots, giving an accent on the lived and shared experiences of violence and violation within a ‘care’ system and stating What We Need, really! Every year the Campaign has done different thematics: Critiquing global mental health, Inclusion in Development, etc. The Campaign has also used a variety of formats: audio visual, photo campaigns, slogan message boarding, poetry and creative expression, storying, blog articles, etc. The campaign aims to raise awareness of the needs of persons with psychosocial disabilities, persons with lived experience, users and survivors of psychiatry, those with a ‘mad’ identity, persons who are neurodiverse or have faced intersectional discrimination, voices from the cross-disability movement and all key stakeholders who have faith in a paradigm shift.

Our location is from within the disability discourse, cognizant of the fast-evolving discourse on the CRPD, the various documents and resources released by the UN on our inclusion and the right to live in the community. The #WhatWENeed campaign will centrally involve us along with our cross-disability allies, to clearly articulate our common needs, to enable a dignified life in the community. The campaign will counter the growing medicalisation and coercive treatments of ordinary lives worldwide and in low- and middle-income countries of the global south. The campaign also challenges the influx and exponential growth of institutions and pharmaceutical companies; the relentless import of western based, medical centric models to communities; mixed with extant colonial practices of segregation, seclusion and arrest without warrant into detention centers of different kinds.

As evidenced by the campaign last years, it is also a celebration of full compliance of the UNCRPD and a useful resource for our communities worldwide. Emphasizing intersectionality, multiple discriminations and amplifying unheard voices within the disability movement, the campaign invites all people to participate and is accessible by the use of social media and simple formats.

The #WhatWENeed campaign will provide an opportunity for energizing national advocacy in the Asia Pacific regions with the full engagement of TCI Asia Pacific national partners, Fellows and allies; to strengthen their national advocacy efforts by composing and disseminating strong messages on De-institutionalization and the Right to live in the Community.