Also in February, the Community had the pleasure to receive the new coordinator, Stan Dubourg, who is due to visit us periodically. His role is to consolidate the link with the Arche Federation and with other Communities, especially those of the Near East, and to help us maintaining the Arche spirituality in the life of the community, in the formation of assistants and in our new projects… In this same spirit, Ghada, our new community director, has spent a certain time in the community of Chambery in France for a training session and, together with Stan, they have focused on assistants training, projects elaboration and collaboration possibilities with various organizations.

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In February again, we had a 2 days training session about the evaluation of handicapped persons and evaluation techniques. This session was animated by a specialist sent to us by the “Institut Libanais d’Educateurs” of St. Joseph University in Beirut. We should now have the possibility to follow up more regularly the evolution of the handicapped persons and to find out the best ways to ensure their development. During this first semester, several assistants had the opportunity of joining formation sessions. Rihab travelled to Slovenia and Italy for a training course dedicated to assistants responsible of communities. Marie went to Switzerland for a session concerning persons in charge of assistants. Besides, Elie travelled to France to take part in a retreat and to spend a few days in the community of Trosly. Rania was due to join Elie in this trip but she had to cancel due to the illness and subsequent death of her father. A French NGO offered Al-Safina a course on the formation of specialized educators, so Qays and Nael took part in this session in the city of Homs (140 km north of Damascus).