Tapola village-community belongs to the international Camphill Movement, which connects people worldwide on organisational and private basis.

At the beginning of the Second World War a group of young Austrian doctors joined and founded Camphill, in Vienna all of them had been occupied with Rudolf Steiners? Anthroposophy for a long time. They started their work in Scotland, near of Aberdeen. The main aim of their community was to give handicapped children a home and good care.

As time went by there was the need to built more such communities; also for adults with handicaps, where instead of school and education work was the centre of daily life. Set up on the anthroposophical basis of Rudolf Steiner and under the guidance of Karl König communities developed, which tried to give the individual human being a worthy and meaningful life. Handicap is not seen as illness, but as human destiny, which the community should give supporting space and possibilities for unfolding. Co-workers living at Camphill don?t see the community as a working place but as a way of living.

One principle of community-life is that we live together with the villagers (our denotation for the handicapped adults), and not for or because of them.

You can find Camphill-communities on many continents, for instance in following countries: South-Africa, Botswana, Canada, Great-Britain, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia , Poland, Russia, India, France, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany and in the USA.