Our cooperation with L'Arche

Our cooperation with L´Arche

In 2007 we officially started to cooperate with L’Arche’s French coordinator for newly emerging communities in Central and Eastern Europe, Maria Biedrawa.  Maria was a tremendous help for us and she gave us a lot of valuable guidance from her 20 years of experience managing Archa communities.  She worked with us to show systematically how to shift our organization in the direction of L’Arche.  She always worked with the management team, with assistants and with people with disabilities and she also met with people from our area.  Conversations and meetings with her were always very enriching.  In 2010 she was replaced by the L’Arche Coordinator for Poland, Barbara Pestka.  We continued in our work to become a L’Arche project.  In 2011 Patrick Fontaine, who at that time was a member of the active L’Arche International, came to meet with us.  He is currently one of two people who are charged with leading the entire L’Arche International organization.  After our meeting with him, we wrote a letter to request that our community be granted membership into the L’Arche international organization.  In January 2012 we became a community in preparation of becoming a member.  This is a phase of preparing for full membership into L’Arche.  In 2013 due to the internal formation of our organization, we requested a two year delay into membership to the year 2015.  By the end of 2013, we modified our bylaws, changed the management structure of our organization, and confirmed that we want to aim for L’Arche membership.  From 2015 we continue again in cooperation with L'Arche. In 2018 we were officially welcomed as L'Arche project and together with L'Arche international envoy Robin Sykes we continue on preparing our full membership in this international federation.

                           

Cooperation with the Le Caillou Blanc L’Arche community

We are also very grateful for our long-term cooperation with the L’Arche community Caillou Blanc from Brittany.  These fantastic people, deep and hard-working, visited us in 2008.  They organized three work-camps with us.  To now, they remain our friends.  We are grateful to them not only for the great amount of work they did for us but also for the wonderful experiences and relationships they shared with us.  We were able to repay their visit by taking part in a work camp with them in Brittany in 2009.  Other communities from Europe were invited to the work camp and the experience was unforgettable.  In 2014, we visited the Le Caillou Blanc community again after 5 years.  We’re grateful for their shared experience of 30 years as a functioning community.  Conversations with the leaders of the community, with assistants and with disabled people are very valuable for us.  Also, the work in their atelier is very inspiring.  This time in their community our band had a concert where everyone had fun and absolutely everyone danced.  We thank them for their friendship and closeness.

Thank you also for long-term cooperation and friendship with the community of La Belle Porte in Brittany.