Other Trunks

Values

Beliefs

The Village's Designed Care Tree

• Human beings have innate needs to belong and to be productive (Love and Work).

• Our own experience is our best teacher. Learning is infinitely more powerful and more lasting when it is real and personal rather than artificial and vicarious.

 

• People are fundamentally resilient rather than fragile. We are capable of learning from our failures and using them as opportunities for growth and change.

 

• Stress cannot be avoided. It is more useful to learn to handle and cope with stress productively rather than to learn ways to avoid it.

 

• People generally will rise to the occasion and accomplish what is expected of them. If forced to choose, it is better to raise the bar of expectations rather than to lower it.

 

• People will accept help more readily if they are treated as equal and active partners in finding solutions to their needs. This is in contrast to being treated as passive recipients by people who are characterized (by themselves or others) as their superiors or experts. It is easier to accept help when we feel that we bring something to the relationship rather than just take from it.

• Having a disability does not change the fundamental nature of the above assumptions! These assumptions are just as true for people with disabilities as they are for non-disabled people!