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Community Corner

Camphill to Hold Open House Saturday

It's a chance to learn more about this unique residency program for adults with developmental disabilities.

Camphill, a residency program for adults with developmental disabilities at 3920 Fairway Dr. in Soquel, will have an open house on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The event is meant to give the public an opportunity to meet the residents and staff, tour the workshops and therapeutic gardens, and sample food and drinks grown and produced at Camphill.

At Camphill, caregivers, or "co-workers," as they call them, live and work alongside the clients, or "friends," creating a unique therapeutic lifestyle for their clientele.

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“The idea is to create as much as possible a self-sustaining community,” said Elizabeth Barber, a program coordinator at Camphill.

The first Camphill was founded in Europe in the 1950s by Karl Konig, and has since grown to more than 100 communities in more than 20 countries all over the world.

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Like the Waldorf school system, Camphill is an offspring of the Anthroposophy movement, a philosophical school that arose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from the work of Rudolph Steiner.

At the core of Camphill is the idea that all people, developmentally disabled or not, have the same basic need to be a functioning part of a community in order to be healthy and reach their full potential, be it physically, mentally or spiritually.

“People with disabilities are subject to the same kinds of limitations, but also the same possibilities for growth that all people face,” said Coleman Lyle, director of Camphill.

“From one point of view, a developmental disability is like a mask which a person has adopted," Lyle continued. "Independent of that mask, you have an individual. That individual is the person you are trying to meet. That is a truism in all human encounters. ... Any person you meet, you are trying to meet the true person, and not the mask, and that involves overcoming one's prejudices and biases, as well as one's habits in thinking about a person.”

Work is the most important element of therapy at Camphill, and the days are busy for everyone who lives there.

“I am so tired right now,” said Sasha, a 29-year-old client at Camphill, as he relaxed before lunchtime. “I spent all morning pulling out those berry bushes and then moving that mulch pile over there.”

Even with the work, life at Camphill is enjoyable for Sasha.

“Oh, yeah, I like living here,” he said.

If you can't check out Camphill at the open house on Saturday, visit its website at camphillca.org

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