Turning Disability into Ability

As part of activities planned around the observance of the International Day of Peace, held in September each year, amputees (above) play in a football game organized by the United Nations Mission in Liberia.

While some people see crippling disability and no economic future, others see opportunity. Some of the innovative business models built around disability have been: Training disabled entrepreneurs in emerging markets (such as online teaching, finance and tech); and businesses that advise emerging market governments on empowering their populations.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has said that it’s time to seize the moment and “plant the seeds of something better and new.” Against today’s backdrop of global reckoning with disease, racism, environmental degradation, increasing cyberattacks, nuclear proliferation, political corruption, and pushback on fundamental human rights, Guterres notes that back in 1945, the delegates in San Francisco — who had also lived through a global pandemic, depression, and war — “seized their opportunity to plant the seeds of something better and new.” 

What new business ideas can you think of that embrace the times we live in?

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