ARCA COMUNITA' IL CHICCO ETS

Our association has been working with people with medium-high intellectual disabilities for over 30 years. It's based in Ciampino (Rome) and it's currently composed by three family houses and a day centre with several workshops. The aim of the association is not providing assistance, but an authentic inclusion, where people with and without disability can experiment mutual relationships of trust and friendship, grow in the awareness of their own dignity and of their own value and work together to build a more human society. Activities take place in the houses and in the day centre. In the houses, it’s about sharing daily life: preparing meals, organising a birthday party, going out, organising a simple activity for the afternoon, such as drawing, watching a film and so on. In the day centre activities are structured according to the capacities of each disabled person and divided in different workshops: Nido (the Nest), for people with strong handicaps, where we mostly work on sensorial stimulation and on simple physical activities; Universo (Universe), for people with autism; Mulino and Natura (Windmill and Nature) where there are manual activities, such as ceramics, recycled paper, gardening, recuperation of Ikea’s unsold plants. In the last years, a music band, Chicco Sband, was born from the enthusiasm of some people from our community; they perform a repertoire made of chants from all over the world, and they have go on tour not only around Rome but also in the rest of Italy. People who work at Chicco are around forty, between houses and workshops, and they are assisted in their activities by volunteers, an integral and indispensable part of the project. Volunteers are of all ages and come from different countries or from the area of Ciampino; they are sometimes from other associations, for example the Red Cross and the Scouts, or they join us to know the specific reality of International Arch to which we belong. What we ask to our volunteers is first of all to be open and to let themselves be surprised by the encounter with people with disabilities. The community of Chicco, as International Arch (https://www.larche.org/), was born precisely from the free meeting of people with and without disability, that have decided to live together their everyday life. The spirit of the association is not to “do for” people with disabilities, but to “be with” and to “do with”, in a truly authentic spirit of friendship and solidarity. Our community has a long experience in volunteering, we trained young people that felt enriched by the discovery of the value of diversity and by authentic life sharing with people with disability, but also with all other volunteers that come to live the same experience from different cultures and backgrounds. In this path, volunteers are accompanied by a responsible that takes care of their training, by the other assistants that allow them to acquire knowledge and competences that are necessary in the work with people with disability, and by other volunteers, that help them with the language (for example a retired Italian teacher) and the integration in the local context.