Information in English
Homeless Shelter for Adult Males
Our house, ARCHE 38, considers itself a contact and info point for people in need, regardless of age, sex, creed, nationality and political conviction. Our aim is to provide to anyone in need a perspective of changing a currently difficult social or financial situation by using the individual capab ilities and competence of persons in need to help them to build up a future for themselves and BY themselves.
So we have a three-layer system of social assistance: Every person - be they male or female, minor or adult or of any nationality can use our services for purposes of (social) information, social assistence and counselling including basic services such as laundry services and the use of sanitary facilities.
The second leg and one of our main tasks is to provide a shelter to homeless adult males (this service is not available to females - though we can under certain circumstandes arrange a place in a shelter for women in another place -Haus Elisabeth), who can stay in our place for 30 days in case of urgency; of course we offer also to those staying in our house the whole gamut of social information and support available within our reaches - nevertheless we expect a minimum of cooperation on the side of our clients.
The third leg of our activities is to provide a longterm stay (up to one year), which nevertheless requires both a serious and persistent effort to change one's situation and - due to compulsory participation in social training courses - fluency in German language.
The core of our aims is not to just "store" people in a dormitory, but to help them to enable themselves to develop a sense of personal responsibility and independence in order to challenge the necessities of the start-up for a reintegration into society - in other words to help them to help themselves.
