L'Arche Canada | Press Release - International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2008

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Jean Vanier

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Press Release - International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2008

L'Arche Canada Communications

Drawing ourselves closer to people living with intellectual disabilities Jean Vanier, founder of L’Arche, estimates that, in Canada, people living with intellectual disabilities often find themselves quite isolated. Even though their legal rights are more and more commonly recognized and respected, the prevailing culture that celebrates individualism and social achievement too often results in their isolation from the mainstream. Today, as the United Nations celebrates the International Day for Persons with Disabilities, the organization places the number of people living with intellectual disabilities at more than 100 million world-wide.

Estimates indicate that between 2.5 and 3 per cent of the population of North America live with an intellectual disability. 1,000,000 across Canada are affected.

Numbers are especially hard to determine in countries where a strong social stigma is still attached to intellectual disability.

In countries suffering war and famine, statistics simply do not exist. People with intellectual disabilities do live in these places, of course; they are, however, among the most oppressed, as well as the first to be abandoned to fend for themselves.

1001 Drawings – A “Virtual Act of Tenderness”

On December 3, Voices & Colours and L’Arche Canada will launch “1001 Drawings … Drawing Ourselves Closer to People Living with Intellectual Disabilities” – a project initiated by the two organizations that has reached beyond and across borders.

http://voicesandcolours.org/1001drawings/disabilities/
According to Vanier, the gesture which is at the heart of “1001 Drawings” – tracing or drawing, from a simple photograph, the face of someone living with an intellectual disability – permits us to take the time to see that person differently, and to use the virtual space of the Internet in an original and unique way, to perform an act of tenderness.

This is the initial year of the project, which aims to remind us that, on a planetary scale, society’s welcome and inclusion of people made vulnerable by an intellectual disability is far from a reality.

Those who wish to see the drawings submitted to date – or who wish to contribute drawings themselves and help us to surpass the goal of 1001 Drawings – are invited to visit the web site at: http://voicesandcolours.org/1001drawings/disabilities/

Organisations interested to be a partner of 1001 Drawings can have more information at :http://voicesandcolours.org/1001drawings/disabilities/partners.htm

L’Arche is an international organization, working in 34 countries around the world. L’Arche develops community environments in which people, with and without intellectual disabilities, share their day-to-day lives with one another. L’Arche thus assists people living with intellectual disabilities to develop their capacities and reveal their gifts through relationships of mutual sharing, relationships which are often the source of transformation for those who do not have an intellectual disability.

For information, contact L'Arche Canada (514) 457-1661