The L’Arche Vision
L’Arche has a broad social vision beyond providing care and services for people with disabilities. L’Arche seeks inclusion for people with disabilities but also seeks to change the society in which they are included. How? One heart at a time.
“Can we hope for a society whose metaphor is not a pyramid but a body, and where each of us is a vital part in the harmony and function of the whole? I believe we can, because I believe that the aspiration for peace, communion, and universal love is greater and deeper in people than the need to win in the competition of life.”
“The very people whom our society so readily excludes [are those] whose humanizing gifts are most needed today. It will be through meaningful relationships – relationships of mutuality – that lasting changes will come about in the perspective and practice of individuals and eventually of society as a whole. And when the wider society grasps the benefits it receives from including all its citizens, the work of pleading for inclusion will no longer be necessary.”
“When people of differing abilities spend time WITH one another, they help create a better world.”
We believe in
Home not housing
Core members and assistants share their lives with one another.
“We do not seek to provide services for people with disabilities. Core members and assistants share their lives with one another. Home life is at the heart of a L’Arche community. Core members and assistants live, work, pray and celebrate together, sharing their joys and their suffering and forgiving each other, as in a family. They have a simple life-style, which gives priority to relationships.”
Independence and Interdependence
Mutually transforming relationships are at the heart of a L’Arche community.
“We do not discover who we are, we do not reach true humanness, in a solitary state; we discover it through mutual dependency, in weakness, in learning through belonging.”
Celebrating the gifts of each person
L’Arche seeks to reveal the particular gifts of people who have intellectual disabilities.
“The belief in the inner beauty of each and every human being is at the heart of L’Arche … and at the heart of being human.”
Embracing our limitations
Just as we all have gifts to share, we all have limitations and disabilities. The sharing and acceptance of our weakness can be a source of humility and also forgiveness. Sharing our gifts can improve our community but sharing our vulnerability is the glue that binds us together. The lack of unity in our culture is often rooted in our inability to accept our own poverty and that of others.
“Growth begins when we start to accept our own weakness.”
Personal growth
We are called to develop our abilities and talents to the full to realize our potential as individuals.
Unity in diversity
It is better that we are different one from another.
“In a divided world, L’Arche wants to be a sign of hope. Its communities, founded on covenant relationships between people of differing intellectual capacity, social origin, religion and culture, seek to be signs of unity, faithfulness and reconciliation.”
Openness and Integration
L’Arche communities are open and welcoming to the world around them.
Spirituality
We believe that in order to grow we need to nurture the whole person.
Solidarity
L’Arche is an international Federation.