How are senior leaders perceived at L'Arche?

L'Arche is an amazing organization that really practices what it preaches in regards to Core member independence, empowerment, and integration. L'Arche Atlanta has solid progressive leadership and has built a great reputation in the community. The Decatur, Oakhurst neighborhoods are incredible and always have something going on, usually within walking distance. And finally, the Core members are delightful( usually).

I'm of the opinion that this is a better part-time position than a full-time one. A good 20-30 hour a week side hussle where you're doing good work and making a real difference. There are incentives to full-time live-in positions, but the work/life balance is lacking as is the pay. And while L'Arche Atlanta does the best it can regarding benefits, hourly rate etc.; at the end of the day, its simply not enough money. Hence, burnout and retention will always be an issue.

The clients are awesome and really a joy to be around. The coworkers are great as well and very supportive

The leadership has no HR or accountability and deals with things inappropriately. Staff are prone to burnout and lack of care. This place is always short staffed and pay is often short.

Lovely community for residents at all times.

Not easy for people of color to be promoted to any leadership position beyond being DSP. So don’t join is you are looking for career growth.

great clients (coremembers), meet people from all over the world

schedule, pay, leadership teams, no accountability

I was a volunteer Assistant here in the early 2010's and the vast majority of the people I met were lovely, humble, gentle and fair, but I had great difficulties there due to the verbal abuse I witnessed, and experienced directly, at the hand of the community leader in position at the time who, as far as I know, is still associated with this community in a non-leadership capacity.

In the not-short-time I was there, I witnessed this leader degrade, humiliate, verbally ambush, shout, and snap at several other people for the either imaginary or absurd reasons in the most inappropriate contexts (if you're supervisor, you provide feeback in private, you don't shame in public). It was particularily traumatizing because so many of the Assistants in the community, who came from all over the world, experienced some form of abuse or neglect in their life that led to feelings of brokenness that brought then to L'Arche. Imagine taking time out of your life to move to Ireland and volunteer, in this intensely vulnerable situation with vulnerable people, but then be confronted by & witness this kind of abuse at the hand of the very person who was suppsed safeguard and model for you the community's values! The outbursts of this leader were widely known at the time, which is all the more disheartening. To be clear though, this is a great communuty, but the fact that it tolerated and accepted such a leader for so very long says so so much to me about the perils of power-imbalances and the bystander effect, not to mention the way spiritual authority can be misused/abused, and so often is. When I came to learn that Jean Vanier (founder of L'Arche) himself was an abusive man in his own aweful way, years later, things made much more sense. Those reading this still in the community, I don't mean to harm, but the truth is the truth and if the Irish should have learned anything about their own history is that no one stands to gain by stuffing down the truth for the sake of propriety, or pride. You should remove abusive people from the communty. Full stop. Had I been older, and more life-experienced at the time, I could and would have documented the experiences and gone to L'Arche International, to put a stop to it. This review will have to do: a salve for my conscience and hopefully for the others who experienced & witnessed what I did. Forgiveness and sorry are just words if behavior never changes--and we all heard those words bandied about by said-leader, but in the time I was there, this leader's behavior never changed. Make of this what you will. Stand up for yourselves, and one another, without fail. You only get one life. Make it count!

fulfilling work, lovely people you're supporting with a strong leadership team who cares abundantly.

Constant need for more help and overtime, truly a calling more than a career.

I was a volunteer Assistant here in the early 2010's and the vast majority of the people I met were lovely, humble, gentle and fair, but I had great difficulties there due to the verbal abuse I witnessed, and experienced directly, at the hand of the community leader in position at the time who, as far as I know, is still associated with this community in a non-leadership capacity.

In the not-short-time I was there, I witnessed this leader degrade, humiliate, verbally ambush, shout, and snap at several other people for the either imaginary or absurd reasons in the most inappropriate contexts (if you're supervisor, you provide feeback in private, you don't shame in public). It was particularily traumatizing because so many of the Assistants in the community, who came from all over the world, experienced some form of abuse or neglect in their life that led to feelings of brokenness that brought then to L'Arche. Imagine taking time out of your life to move to Ireland and volunteer, in this intensely vulnerable situation with vulnerable people, but then be confronted by & witness this kind of abuse at the hand of the very person who was suppsed safeguard and model for you the community's values! The outbursts of this leader were widely known at the time, which is all the more disheartening. To be clear though, this is a great communuty, but the fact that it tolerated and accepted such a leader for so very long says so so much to me about the perils of power-imbalances and the bystander effect, not to mention the way spiritual authority can be misused/abused, and so often is. When I came to learn that Jean Vanier (founder of L'Arche) himself was an abusive man in his own aweful way, years later, things made much more sense. Those reading this still in the community, I don't mean to harm, but the truth is the truth and if the Irish should have learned anything about their own history is that no one stands to gain by stuffing down the truth for the sake of propriety, or pride. You should remove abusive people from the communty. Full stop. Had I been older, and more life-experienced at the time, I could and would have documented the experiences and gone to L'Arche International, to put a stop to it. This review will have to do: a salve for my conscience and hopefully for the others who experienced & witnessed what I did. Forgiveness and sorry are just words if behavior never changes--and we all heard those words bandied about by said-leader, but in the time I was there, this leader's behavior never changed. Make of this what you will. Stand up for yourselves, and one another, without fail. You only get one life. Make it count!