Note: The current conflict in the Middle East is having an immediate effect and dramatic impact on L’Arche Bethlehem. The community urgently needs your support at this time of crisis. Your gift will support people at the heart of L’Arche Bethlehem during this time of conflict and uncertainty. Please donate now.
Since it was founded in 1964, L’Arche has grown from one small community in France to 150 across the globe. Solidarity has long been an important way for people who care about L’Arche to gain a more global perspective regarding the gifts and needs of people in different places around the world.
The L’Arche Canada Foundation and L’Arche communities across the country raise funds for Solidarity projects in L’Arche communities that face extraordinary challenges due to economic hardship, political instability, food insecurity, natural disasters, and war. These communities live L’Arche’s mission – to make known the gifts of people with intellectual disabilities through mutually transforming relationships – with little to no public funding. Despite these challenges, they continue to show resilience.
In the past year, L’Arche Canada donors provided over $700,000 for international Solidarity initiatives in Ukraine, Poland, Haiti, Egypt, and Ivory Coast.
L’Arche Ukraine
Context & Challenges:
- A deep level of instability in the country, ongoing corruption, and the current war in the eastern part of the country.
- Most citizens are looking for ways to emigrate, rather than to build and invest locally.
- No public funding. Although the community is proud to raise a third of its annual operating costs locally, they still rely on international financial partners.
Vision for the Future:
- To conduct more activities to spread the L’Arche mission, not only in the city and region but also throughout the country.
- To explore social entrepreneurship; to support the community and the mission of L’Arche through income producing activities.
L’Arche Haiti
Context & Challenges
- Haiti is vulnerable to many natural disasters, including hurricanes, severe earthquakes, floods and mudslides.
- More than 59 per cent of Haiti’s citizens live below the poverty line; more than 24 per cent live below the extreme poverty line.
- Because the culture remains full of taboos and negative prejudices towards persons with intellectual disabilities, they are often locked up and hidden from society, or abandoned and left to fend for themselves.
Vision for the Future
- To strengthen both L’Arche Schools by updating curriculum, recruiting more qualified staff, and integrating parent and student feedback.
- To increase the amount of money the community is able to fundraise locally.
Meet Ismaël
Ismaël has lived in L’Arche Haiti since he was two or three years old. In 2002 he was discovered in a courtyard with a rope tied around his neck to support his head. Fortunately, he was taken to L’Arche where he was entrusted to the care of L’Arche Haiti. Ismaël recently turned 18. Although he does not speak with words, he does find many ways to communicate, including through his great smile.
L’Arche Ivory Coast
Context & Challenges:
- There remains a lot of fear and shame in the culture around having a child with an intellectual disability.
- Almost 50 per cent of the population of Ivory Coast live in poverty.
- Bouake, where L’Arche has its community, is still in a state of recovery after the civil war that started in 2002.
Vision for the Future:
- To strengthen and expand the local leadership team and to continue to build a local network of supporters.
- To find new ways of generating local income.
- To welcome more core members by opening a fourth house in Bouake.
Meet Soro Princesse
In June 2014 passersby found a child abandoned in a landfill site near the city of Abidjan. Those who left the child thought he was dead due to the amount of significant injury to the child. But those who found the child cared enough to call the authorities, and he was taken to the local hospital where several surgeries were needed. Since nobody new the child’s name, they called him Soro Princesse. The hospital’s social services referred the child to L’Arche where he now lives.
Please Show Your Support
Imagine a world that has room for everyone, where differences are celebrated, where you are welcomed as you are. Please help to support one of these L’Arche International communities. Secure donations can be made online by visiting www.larche.org/support-us
You can also join L’Arche Comox Valley in our fundraising. All proceeds from our monthly Solidarity Café, refundable pop cans and bottles and Muffin Sundays at Christ the King Parish go L’Arche International for support these communities.
