The Program was conceptualized to ensure that the underprivileged/disabled people are able to maximise their physical and mental abilities, to access regular services and opportunities, to become active contributors to community and society at large.

Community-based rehabilitation (CBR) is community action to ensure that people with disabilities have the same rights and opportunities as all other community members. This includes, for example, equal access to health care, education, skills training, employment, family life, social mobility and political empowerment. Community Based Rehabilitation is a strategy for socio-economic development. It is essentially about human rights. Its key principles need to be poverty alleviation, education, health and rehabilitation. and enabling people with disabilities participation in the whole range of human activities. One of the key objectives of any CBR strategy is the inclusion of people with disabilities in the civil, social, political and economic structures of the community.

This means people with disabilities playing a full part as citizens of their society with the same rights, entitlements and responsibilities as others, while contributing tangible benefits to the whole community. Despite the progress made, many people with disabilities still do not receive basic rehabilitation services and are not enabled to participate equally in education, training, work, recreation or other activities in their community or in wider society.

Those with the least access include women with disabilities, people with severe and multiple disabilities, people with psychiatric conditions, people living with HIV, persons with disabilities who are poor, and their families.

Following on from the CBR Strategy, efforts must continue to ensure that all individuals with disabilities irrespective of age, sex, type of disabilities and socio-economic status, exercise the same rights and opportunities as other citizens in society – “A society for all”.