Day Center WITHOUT WALLS

The aim of the project was to collect good practices at European level on initiatives that promote the active participation of people with intellectual disabilities in the community, supporting them to leave day centres and become active through volunteering, employment or community participation.

The idea of a day centre is not always positive, often day centres can be:

• Institutional - control what people do
• Isolated - not linked to the community
• suffocating - do not allow people to develop and contribute

Often people believe that the walls of a centre provide security. But walls don't create security, what creates security is:

• η belief that their voice will be heard
• ο check of their lives
• the strong links with others
• active participation in the community

The aim of the project was to explore how day centres can be a different kind of space and to better understand what it means to be a Day Centre Without Walls. Our first definition is that a Day Centre Without Walls is a community where:

• The work that people do has a real meaning for them
• The people have the ownership and freedom at work
• The community is economically and socially sustainable
• People create a welcoming and inclusive community
• People work together as Equal for mutual benefit
• Humans are carriers of a wider social change in their community
• People are finding and forming deeper personal Relationships

https://citizen-network.org/library/day-centres-without-walls.html

The Day Centers Without Walls (DC WITHOUT WALLS) project was funded by Erasmus+ and implemented in the period 2019-2020:

Association of Parents and Friends of people with autism in Rethymnon (Rethymno)

Jaunuoliu dienos centras (Lithuania)

Papillons Blancs de Lille (France)

Cooperativa sociale Kara Bobowski (Italy)

The Centre for Welfare Reform Limited (United Kingdom)