Description of organisation

“Associazione Comunità Papa Giovanni XXIII” (APG23) is located in the city of Boxtel (Netherlands) since 2006, and is a non-profit organization focused on disadvantaged ad marginalized people living in situations of personal and economic difficulties.
The primary goal of the organization is the promotion of social inclusion of disadvantaged and marginalized people (families in poverty conditions, Roma families and adults in vulnerable conditions such as homeless people, ex-prisoners, alcohol and/or drugs addicted people), and the prevention of the substantial causes that generate social exclusion and poverty.
The intervention is characterized by the choice of the association members to spend their lives with people who are socially excluded in order to remove the causes that bring injustice. The main methodology of intervention consists in the setting up of family homes, where members choose to welcome people with different needs and emergencies.

The first two years in Boxtel were used to get knowledge on the territory, to understand the context and to identify and analyze needs and constraints of the country. The Dutch welfare system, that is considered one of the most advanced in the world, has some deficits towards vulnerable adults living in conditions of social exclusion because of economic problems, periods of detention, rehabilitation programs from drug addiction, health problems and psychiatric disorders. The Dutch welfare system provides economic benefits for vulnerable people but does not provide any measure aimed at the rehabilitation and reintegration of individuals in civil society and in the communities to which they belong.
In 2008, the first family home was opened in order to welcome adults in vulnerable conditions. Over the years, the association hosted about 50 vulnerable adults and support their socio-economic reintegration pathways. In the shelter, material assistance is offered combined with the family dimension of sharing everyday life. Living in a familiar context foster the acquisition of life-skills, especially relational skills essential to be integrated in the civil society. Moreover, the shelter is surrounded by 2 hectares plot of land with a wood, a vegetable garden and a breeding farm. The operators of the association have scheduled activities in the land as occupational therapy, a kind of rehabilitation fostering health, well-being and practical skills acquisition.
Moreover, the operators of APG23 started to collaborate with other association working in the field in order to develop rehabilitation programmes for vulnerable people through occupational therapy fostering life-skills and job-skills acquisition.
The closest collaborations are with the following associations:
• the Straat Pastoral along with APG23 implements street outreach services in order to meet and support homeless people;
• Stichting Pub and Stichting SOS, along with APG23 implements occupational therapeutic activities (such as care of green areas, public gardens and streets maintenance, recovery, recycling and sale of secondhand goods) for vulnerable adults, both adults hosted in the family home and adults met by the street outreach service or adults reported by public authorities and social services;
• Voedseltuin, along with operators and beneficiaries of APG23 cultivate a vegetable garden and collect food surpluses from the large-scale retail distributions in order to deliver food supply to about 200 poor families of the territory together with the Food Bank.

Finally, in 2013, over the recommendation of the parish of Boxtel, the association began to deal with Roma families in small nomad camps located in the outskirts of Boxtel, Sint-Oedenrode, Son en Breugel and Best. These families do not have access to any kind of public subsidy and live in a situation of strong marginalization due to ethnic discrimination they are submitted, but also often to their distrust and lack of willingness to truly integrate into Dutch society. Thanks to the collaboration with Voedseltuin and the Food Bank, APG23 is able to offer these families material and psychological support, distributing food and clothing and trying to establish relationships of trust with them.

Inclusion topics

This organisation is willing to involve volunteers who face situations which make their participation in activities more difficult, from the following categories for different types of project:

• Cultural differences
• Economic obstacles
• Educational difficulties