Our Impact

People with and without intellectual disabilities sharing life, creating home, and building meaningful relationships together.

L'Arche Portland transforms the lives of people with and without intellectual disabilities by working together to create home, share life, and build community. 

L’Arche communities are, and have always been, a response to institutions, social isolation, the spiritual journey, and our mutual need for one another. We invite people into relationships across differences, recognize the gifts and needs of each person, and celebrate what it means to be fully human.

We have three homes and monthly gatherings that provide people with and without intellectual disabilities opportunities to discover and build relationships across differences. L'Arche Portland cultivates an extended community of friends, volunteers, and supporters in Oregon, as well as across the country and world.

L'Arche Portland is part of an international movement of 149 communities and 20 projects in 35 countries around the world.

Our Mission

• Make known the gifts of people with intellectual disabilities, revealed through mutually transforming relationships.

• Foster an environment in community that responds to the changing needs of our members.

• Engage in our diverse cultures, working together toward a more human society.

At L’Arche Portland, we address the need to belong by building deep, meaningful relationships between people with and without intellectual disabilities. We build appreciation for values of interdependence, cooperation, vulnerability, and belonging by sharing simple daily routines and meals, coming together in prayer, reflection, and celebration, going on retreats and vacations together, and actively participating in our local communities.

Our Vision of Disability

People with disabilities experience disproportionately high rates of discrimination, poverty, poor mental and physical health outcomes, and marginalization.  Our society does not recognize one of the most important needs of all – the need to belong. Belonging is a need felt by all people, but it is often neglected for people with intellectual disabilities. L'Arche Portland addresses this common need for belonging and the isolation and loneliness that people with intellectual disabilities face through our intentional model of fostering mutual relationships.

Our vision of disability is based on the simple, powerful idea that love, relationships, and belonging are essential to all people and that every person has the ability and responsibility to contribute. We are creating, day by day, a place of belonging, a place where people—with or without disabilities—feel welcomed, valued and loved.