President's Foreword

Dear friends,

Andreas Georgiades, President of P.O.A.A. Limassol, presents the journey, struggles, and vision of the organization.

As President of the Pancyprian Organisation for Rehabilitation of Disabled People, Limassol, I warmly welcome you to our website. Since 1966, P.O.A.A. has been a steady support and a strong voice for people with mobility disabilities in Cyprus. In Limassol we are honored to serve more than 1,000 members with consistency, dignity, and absolute respect for their needs.

Today, more than ever, our mission takes on deeper meaning. We do not settle for simple support; we work daily for deep and lasting changes that will improve the lives of everyone around us and, above all, people with disabilities. Our work rests on two pillars: social empowerment and the advocacy of fundamental rights. With the valuable contribution of professional social workers and our dedicated volunteers, we stand by every person with a disability, identifying barriers, demanding solutions, and opening paths to genuine independent living.

We place particular emphasis on shaping a society that understands and respects. Through our educational programs in schools, we cultivate empathy, the power to see the world through another's eyes. Empathy is not just a value; it is the foundation of an inclusive society, and we are proud that this message has already reached dozens of schools.

At the same time, we fight long-standing battles for institutional changes that will reshape the landscape of disability in Cyprus. Together with other organizations:

we achieved the non-reassessment of people with permanent, irreversible disabilities,
we requested and continue to promote the introduction of Empathy as a subject in education,
we advocate for the creation of a Unified Disability Authority, so that every person with a disability receives comprehensive support fairly, with dignity, and without income or other inequalities.

Our goals are large, but necessary: to ensure meaningful accessibility everywhere, to strengthen rehabilitation services, and to create structures that allow people with disabilities to live equally, work, participate, and dream.

I invite you to explore our website, to get to know our work in depth and, if you wish, to become part of this effort. Together we can build a society more humane, more just, and truly inclusive for all.

With respect,
Andreas Georgiades
President of P.O.A.A. Limassol

Together in the work

Current and former President of P.O.A.A. Limassol

Foreword from the former President of P.O.A.A.

Mr. Petros Stylianou

For the writer, your whole noble effort, both for achieving the goals of the disability movement and for honoring what has been earned by the disability movement with countless pains and struggles, constitutes a work worthy of the warmest congratulations.

Because, quite simply, without the active presence of the disability movement, not only are new achievements in the field of disability issues not attained, but, far more, the achievements already gained are threatened.

At this moment, fellow comrades, I consider the position of the disability community before the establishment of the Pancyprian Organisation for Rehabilitation of Disabled People: the disability community was completely neglected, unprotected, and devalued, the victim of an erroneous intellectualist approach on the part of the state apparatus and a large segment of the Cypriot population.

The systematic and active presence decades ago of P.O.A.A. overturned what had been in force until then, validated the voice and role of the Cypriot disability community, and provided substantive results: the establishment of the Center for Vocational Rehabilitation of Disabled People, the achievement of the goal for organ transplantation, the shift in the approach to recruitment of people with disabilities in the Public Service, the establishment and operation of hemodialysis mechanisms for kidney patients, and many other achievements that constitute sacred gains for our disability community.

Yet the safeguarding of the gains already won and the setting of targets for achieving new visions and goals of our disability community are not achieved through inertia and the absence of the organized movement, but are seriously threatened, along with the security of the gains already attained.

It is for all these reasons that I warmly congratulate the disability movement of P.O.A.A. Limassol, which pioneers in achieving the two prerequisites of the goals of our disability movement: both the safeguarding of achievements and gains and the attainment of existing pending objectives.

With all my respect once again for the work you carry out.