Our new Community Mandate!
In June, the community gathered for our annual Summer Picnic and voted with a loud hoorah to approve the final draft of our L’Arche Portland Community Mandate for 2023 -2028! We hope you’re as excited about these goals as we are:
As we emerge from the hardships and trauma that Covid and the last few years have brought to our Community and individual lives, we recognize that healing, reconnection, and reengagement are needed across all facets of our Community. The spirit, hope, and joy that have brought us together over the past 36 years and continue to bring us together in Community today need tending but remain present and ready to thrive. To heal ourselves and flourish, we will renew our life as the L’Arche Portland Community through the following means:
Building Community
We will build, through intentional and sustained commitment, a life giving L’Arche Portland Community.
● Our Community is welcoming and accepting of everyone’s unique gifts and differences. We will work to create belonging for all community members.
● Community members with intellectual disabilities are at the heart of our community life and will share in and lead community events.
● The health of our Community depends on our interconnected relationships and the intentional care of these relationships. Caring for these relationships will help us better address our Community’s specific needs more capably.
● Our Community depends on a wider circle of friends and partners, and they depend on us. We will prioritize partnering with and inviting friends, family, and neighbors into shared and accessible spaces of community and celebration.
● Our Community finds ways to share and prioritize joy and celebration together. We recognize that fun and play shouldn’t be reserved for special occasions, but rather a key ingredient of our shared everyday life. We will plan and carry out and give priority attention to living this joy more fully including dedication to adequate funds, resources, and time.
Leadership and Accountability
Leadership in our Community is “us together”. We are all part of this Community, each with tasks and participating responsibilities and all accountable for and to one another.
● Our Community will practice accountable, transparent, and revised rules of cooperation.
● Members with intellectual disabilities lead us and center our shared mission and goals. We will ensure full participation of members with intellectual disabilities in community decisions by attention to accessibility, communication, and opportunities appropriate and authentic to individuals’ gifts and specific needs.
● All employees are welcomed fully, given the tools and resources to succeed in roles and responsibilities, and given the training and mentorship to develop and grow personally, professionally, and spiritually. These goals can be aided by:
Supporting a healthy balance of work and recreational life.
Committing to formation and other opportunities to share and grow together.
Renewing relationships with former assistants and inviting their active listening and potential mentorship.
Adequately compensating staff with pay, PTO, benefits, and support resources.
● As a Community, we will prioritize increasing staff and resource capacity at all critical care and leadership levels to ensure stability through times of transition and help reduce staff burnout.
● Our Community Leader will prioritize the establishment, continued development, and success of a healthy Community Council composed of Community members with intellectual disabilities, Assistants, Leadership, and Community friends. The Community Council will help clarify community needs and desires and will regularly present updates at Board Meetings.
● The Community Leader, Directors team, Board of Directors, and Community Council will be actively engaged with all their responsibilities in support of the well-being of the community. Expectations include but are not limited to:
Staying informed of all applicable organization by-laws, policies, and guidelines.
Participating in the life of the community.
The Community Leader, Directors team, and Community Council will provide all pertinent and necessary material in a timely manner to support Board and Community decision making.
The Board will review all pertinent and necessary material in advance of meetings and votes.
● Our Community Leader will help to facilitate performance reviews, exit interviews, and other systems of accountability for all members of the community including the Community Leader’s own performance review with the Board of Directors.
● We will recommit to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion across all levels of leadership.
Spirituality and Identity
Through deliberate and open conversation and practice, we will identify our shared community values that bind and focus our shared mission as L’Arche Portland.
● As a Community, we will create spaces to share, identify, and practice common values and spiritual goals that faith pulls us towards together.
● We will review our current and past practices, including our founding stories, texts, and language, to ensure they accurately reflect who we are as a Community.
● Our Community will regularly name, observe, and create shared practices and spaces that clarify our shared goals, spirituality, and identity.
● Uplifting and amplifying the voices and contributions of members with intellectual disabilities will help to clarify these shared goals, values, and identity.
● Our Community will draw from the different practices and beliefs within our community, making space for all members to share rituals and traditions as we learn and grow together.
● Our Community will prioritize creating shared activities across our different homes to connect us as a Community.
Home Life and Culture
We will promote and nurture healthy environments within our homes, centered around the well-being and dignity of members with intellectual disabilities and supportive of a culture that helps to retain and recruit employees.
● We will clarify and renew our rules of cooperation and communication throughout our Community to ensure accountability, transparency, and shared growth.
● Our Community will work to reimagine natural support systems to bolster home morale and ease staff burnout.
● We will create accessible spaces of shared practice, celebration, and joy within our homes centered around opportunities for house members with intellectual disabilities to participate and lead.
● Our Community will continue to explore innovative models of “living community” (e.g., our very own Gabriel House) as we look to best serve people with intellectual disabilities in a changing world.
● Current house members will be given an active voice in the decision-making process when selecting and welcoming new house members.
● Self-determination will be prioritized and promoted for members with intellectual disabilities.
● House members’ (Core Members, Gabriel House Members, and Assistants) families play an essential role in our Community. The Community will develop and care for the relationships between family members & the larger Community.
● We will continue to build our partnerships and relationships on the west side of Portland.
● Goals of the current Mandate will be revisited in a mid-Mandate review to ensure they are best serving the needs & well-being of the Community.
