Beyond Country Borders
Anthroposophical Curative Education and Social Therapy always had an supra-national development. What began in middle europe with the founding of the first institutions can now be found in over 40 countries on all continents.
Regular international conferences, a formal network which provides continuous cooperation on the main questions and especially the engagment of individuals contributes to this continuing development. Here one finds processes and support that help to develop the anthroposophical methods of Curative Education and Social Therapy. Only in this way can the opportunities and care needed today by people with disabilities and their families be carried out.
In over 40 countries…
and on every continent, anthroposophical curative education and social therapy are present.
After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the number of institutions increased dramatically once again. Just as previously under the Third Reich, so also the Communist regime did not allow the founding of anthroposophical institutions. In these countries today there are schools, homes for children, workshops and living arrangements for adults and training centres for curative educators and social therapists.
The creation of new places is focused mainly on day schools and integrative institutions as well as, for adults, community accommodation and employment opportunities.
Mutual Support
The conditions under which these institutions survive in the various countries are more than just different. In the West, well-established as curative and therapeutic centres, recognised and subsidised by the state; in other countries, the bare minimum, and the daily battle for mere survival.
Both a formal and an informal network connect these often apparently unbridgeable gaps. The formal network of institutions, national associations and the International College of Curative Education (Internationale Konferenz für Heilpädagogik) facilitates the transfer of abilities and counselling as well as financial assistance. The informal network is carried by individual people, whose experience, friendship and awareness of standing within a common stream of development are made available to other countries and other people, so that the lot of those people with disabilities may be improved.