L’Arche Overseas Development Fund, known as ODF, was set up fifteen years ago, to make it easier for people in this country to help L’Arche communities overseas.  L’Arche ODF is part of L’Arche in the United Kingdom.

L’Arche ODF supports L’Arche communities overseas where there is little or no central or local government funding for people with learning disabilities.  Donations sent through ODF play a direct and vital part in keeping many L’Arche communities going.

In some developing countries, including Africa, L’Arche is primarily for children and young adults.  We provide a home in a family-style setting as well as education in special needs schools, and employment in workshops for the older members.  Outreach services are being developed to allow L’Arche to extend the help it can offer to local families who are living with a family member with disabilities in their own home.

L’Arche core members often have profound and multiple disabilities.  In some countries,   many of them have been abandoned at birth because of the stigma attached to disability.  They, and the assistants who share their lives with them, form the L’Arche communities which spread the message of the value and worth, to all of us, of people with disabilities.
“Whatever their gifts or their limitations, people are all bound together in a common humanity”  (from the Charter of L’Arche)