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There are many ways to get involved in L’Arche. By entering our website you have taken the first step. Below, you can find out more about different ways to be involved. If you have any other idea for an adventure with L’Arche, please, contact us!

What does being a member of the L’Arche community mean?

Being a member of L’Arche can be an opportunity to:

  • start an adult life and live with others in a shared home or apartment, get assistant support at home if the community runs a support project at your place of residence,
  • learn new skills by attending therapeutic activities workshop or working,
  • meet people who can become your friends.

 

You can expect that:

  • other community members will help you to discover your talents and skills and will support you in achieving your dreams and plans,
  • you will celebrate and share meals and spend your free time or holidays with others,
  • you will discover that you are important and needed trough many opportunities to help each other.
  • assistants will accompany you in everyday life, they will respond to your needs and encourage you to acquire skills that will allow you to set your goals and achieve them
  • you will take more and more responsibility for your own life and take decisions
  • your commitment to L’Arche will last as long as it is good for you and the community. Every year during a special review you will be able to talk about it and decide for the future with others;
  • we will count on your commitment in what is important for L’Arche, i.e., to build together a better world for all of us. It also means that we will expect you to undertake community tasks;
  • your personal views on life, religion, and values that are important to you will be respected. In return, we ask you to respect the spiritual beliefs of other members of the community and participate in community meetings and ceremonies;
  • your family members or carers and institutions can be involved in the community life, because L’Arche Foundation cooperates with your cercle of support.

 

How to join us?

Each community offers a range of options, how you can become part of it. This can be, for example: living in one of its houses or flats, participation in workshops, participation in a project run by a community. Each community also has its internal procedures explaining how to become part of it as a member or friend. To find out more, contact your nearest L’Arche community. Here you will find addresses and contact details for each community.

An assistant is one who shares community life with people with intellectual disabilities and other members of the L’Arche community. If you commit yourself as an assistant, this is what you can expect:

  • you will be asked for an attitude of openness to mutual relationships with respect for the dignity of each person;
  • you will support people with disabilities at home or in workshops or any other form of community activity;
  • your main task will be supporting members of the community with disabilities in various dimensions of every-day life: household responsibilities, budget management, maintaining health, leisure, prayer, maintaining family relationships, building personal relationships, participation in social life and documenting your work;
  • you will be introduced gradually through an internship, to the rules for supporting people with intellectual disabilities and community life;
  • you will participate in trainings and formations that will help you better understand people with disabilities and your role as an assistant and a companion as wel as a participant of the community life;
  • you will be asked to respect the rules of support and community life as expressed in the community’s regulations and recommendations;
  • you will work in a team with other assistants and specialists (a pedagogue, a psychologist, a social worker);
  • you will participate in running a household: maintaining a high level of room cleanliness, washing, preparing meals, shopping, etc.;
  • you will be asked to undertake various tasks for the community.

 

Your involvement will set out in a volunteer contract or an employment form, under the salary policy of the L’Arche Foundation.

You can also expect that:

  • your personal beliefs including religious ones, will be respected and we will celebrate your unique value as a person;
  • you will discover your talents and you will have the opportunity to develop in many dimensions: you will learn how to build relationships with others, to acquire professional competences, clarify your goals and life choices, deepen faith in your tradition and live according to values that are important to us;
  • you will get support in difficult situations from other members of the community and you will be motivated to develop your skills and overcome your weakness;
  • you will be invited to live the mission of the International Federation of L’Arche Communities which is: to discover the gifts of people with disabilities within the community and to build with them a better, more inclusive society;
  • if you decide so, we hope that you will have a beautiful adventure with L’Arche, and we may walk together for many years.

YOU CAN HELP L’ARCHE AS A VOLUNTEER:

  1. By taking part in our activities as an assistant, being a board member or undertake short-term tasks. Assistants support people with intellectual disabilities in everyday life. They are at the same time caregivers, therapists and close friends.

    Each community has a board that holds financial and legal responsibility. It needs people ready to serve with their competence, professional experience and time. If you are open to such involvement and live in Krakow, Poznan, Wroclaw, Warsaw or Gdynia, please, contact a community leader.

    Short-term volunteering consist of:
    • helping in everyday household duties:cooking, cleaning, gardening,
    • helping in giving support to people with learning disabilities and do some office work,
    • inviting L’Arche to give a presentation about its vision and activities in your organisation or institution,
    • helping in organization of different events: holidays, celebrations, meetings.

 

  1. Sharing your knowledge, skills and professional experience as an expert in your field.

    • We welcome any help in improving the professional support provided to our members with intellectual disabilities and we are open to advices of professionals: psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors, and nurses.
    • Any help in improving our fundraising and public relations is welcomed. It can be a help in organizing public events.
    • Wery often we look fro a help in renovating our houses or building new ones.

 

  1. Becoming a community friend by visiting a community house, a workshop and offering your time, presence and prayer.

    • you can choose the status of a friend, if you prefer to be just near community people,
    • you can help us – “the church of the poor” to live our faith of of more deeply, if you are a priest or a nun or a lay theologian and our spirituality resonates with yours,
    • you can support us with your prayer, because we relay on silent friends who standby us through prayer.

 

Do you want to become a volunteer?

Please, contact a selected Community.

Each community has a board that holds financial and legal responsibilities. Being a board member is a very important role. We  need people ready to serve with their professional competences, experience and time. If you are open to such involvement and live in Krakow, Poznan, Wroclaw, Warsaw, or Gdynia, please, contact a respective community leader.

You can help us today!

By supporting our activities financially, you become part of L’Arche!

Support us!

If you are friends with people with intellectual disabilities, you think about their future and together you want to build a community in which each person is needed and you want to participate in the mission of changing the world for the better, we encourage you to contact nearest L’Arche community or the National Leader of L’Arche in Poland. We are happy to share our experience and have fun together!

The community usually begins with a seed group, it means people who, with generosity of heart, want to create a place for people with intellectual disabilities to build lasting relationships with them. The group needs to stay in touch with the National Leader of L’Arche and reflects on the mission and identity of L’Arche to make sure that you want to create such a community. When the group is convinced to choose L ’Arche vision, you need to discern a certain model of the community you wish to create.

The next stage is to do a research about the situation of people with intellectual disabilities in the your area and to write a strategic and financial plan for the future community structures. Once the plan is approved by the national structures (National Leader and National Board of L’Arche in Poland), it is then recommended as a project to the representatives of the International Federation of L’Arche Communities. After obtaining approval of the plan, the group becomes a L’Arche project.

Would you like to get involved, do you have any questions?

Don’t hesitate and contact us!

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© 2020 L’Arche Poland, photo: Tomasz Prokop, Michał Nowak, Grzegorz Kotlarz, Gaba Kucz, members and friends of  L’Arche

Wspierają L'Arche Polska (L'Arche Poland is supported by)

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