L’Arche communities are family-like homes where people with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities live and work together. In the sharing of day-to-day life, L’Arche communities give witness to the reality that persons with such disabilities possess inherent qualities of welcome, wonderment, spirituality, and friendship.
We believe that these qualities, expressed through vulnerability and simplicity, actually make people with a disability our real teachers about what is most important in life: to love and to be loved.
The international L’Arche movement, founded by Jean Vanier in 1964, fosters compassion for all people, honoring differences of intellectual capacity, religion, culture, race, and belief. The first L’Arche community in the United States was founded in 1972 in Erie, Pennsylvania. Today, L’Arche USA has 16 existing communities and two emerging communities across the country.
In addition to raising the national visibility of L’Arche in the U.S., we are working to recruit more assistants to live and work in our communities. We are also helping our homes become more accessible as our people with disabilities age and become more physically fragile.
L’Arche USA strives to serve as a sign of hope for transforming our larger world into one where people are welcomed, celebrated, and encouraged to grow as human beings, and where justice, compassion and faith are practiced in the smallest acts of daily living.
L’Arche USA is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization, and we welcome your support. For more information, please visit us on the web at http://www.larcheusa.org/. You may also contact us by e-mail at info@larcheusa.org, or by phone at (503) 282-6231.