Asia Pacific Disability Rehabilitation Journal 179 Vol. 14 No. 2 2003 AN INTER-COUNTRY STUDY OF EXPECTATIONS ROLES, ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOURS OF COMMUNITY-BASED REHABILITATION VOLUNTEERS Manoj Sharma*, Sunil Deepak** ABSTRACT World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends community-based rehabilitation (CBR) as the chosen approach for meeting the needs of persons with disabilities (PWD), in developing countries. A key element in the implementation of this approach is the CBR worker at community level, a role often played by community volunteers. Often, CBR projects involving volunteers face the problem of high turn over of volunteers. However, the profile of the community volunteer has not been studied enough. Therefore, this study gathered information from CBR volunteers in Eritrea, Egypt, India, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, Pakistan, and Vietnam (n=176) regarding their expectations, roles, attitudes and behaviours pertaining to CBR work. The survey revealed that majority of CBR volunteers volunteered their time as a personal decision (63%) and were not personally disabled (84%). It was found that satisfaction from CBR work was directly related to self-efficacy or behaviour specific confidence in their ability to perform CBR-related tasks, while inverse and significant relationships were found with barriers and outcome expectations. Thus, for retaining volunteers, CBR projects need to provide educational activities that build self-efficacy of volunteers to fulfil CBR-related tasks and reduce barriers. INTRODUCTION In 1976, World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated that 90% of persons with disabilities were totally neglected in developing countries and introduced the community-based rehabilitation (CBR) strategy as part of its goal to accomplish "Health for All by the year 2000" (1). Whilst the year 2000 has gone by, yet the needs of persons with disabilities (PWD) remain largely unmet in developing nations, even though there has been a large increase in the number of countries, which have decided to adopt the CBR approach. However, often such projects remain limited to "pilot" areas and in spite of national policies for implementing CBR, a lack of resources hinder their actual implementation (2). The Joint Position Paper of United Nations agencies defines the main objectives of CBR, "to ensure that people with disabilities are empowered to maximise their physical and mental