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Riverflow Community is inspired by the Camphill Movement and this intentional community model. Among Riverflow’s founders there are more than three decades of lived experience in Camphill. The founding group of Riverflow Community carries a deep and abiding belief that the Camphill model continues to be cutting edge in what it has to offer as a lifestyle and an inclusive form of direct care. Riverflow has embarked on the path to affiliate status with Camphill, which can take a year or more to pursue, beginning with mentorship, guidance, and advice from an already established Camphill community. In addition to these threads, Riverflow is flourishing under the guidance of an intentional community consultant with prior experience founding a Camphill community.
Camphill is an international movement for social change with over a hundred affiliate communities worldwide. Camphill was founded by Dr. Karl König, an Austrian pediatrician and educator who fled the Nazi annexation of his own country and settled in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1939 with a group of young physicians, artists, and caregivers. Together, this group focused on providing loving, therapeutic care for children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Dr. König and his colleagues were inspired to develop this socially therapeutic work through their knowledge of Anthroposophy, the teaching of philosopher and educator Rudolf Steiner.
Dr. König’s special gift was to understand and focus on the abilities of each person, not their disabilities. Through teaching and modeling, the Camphill founders turned this gift into an effective approach to care that honors the whole human being. The pioneers of Camphill developed the idea that if each member contributed their own special gifts and talents to the group, then the needs of each person could be met in a cooperative community. This vision lives on, and each new generation in Camphill strives toward achieving it in different ways.
Camphill Communities value the practice of mutual support in an interdependent community. This provides the basis for everyone to make valuable social contributions based on their skills and strengths, honoring each person’s capacity for communication and connection, and allowing everyone to improve the lives of others. The transformation from consumer, staff, or client, to friend, coworker, or self-advocate is the primary healing resource within community life, the foundation for all educational, social, and therapeutic endeavors in Camphill. This is the Camphill ethos. Please visit the Camphill Foundation website for more on the history of Camphill:
