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About Us — ARC's History
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In 1954, a small, dedicated group of Richmond area families started a grassroots organization – the Richmond Association for Mentally Retarded Children – that is today known as The Greater Richmond ARC.
As we celebrated our 50th anniversary in 2004, we drew on our long history of service for guidance and looked toward the future. We realized that, above all, we must not forget our roots in remaining firmly committed to serving our clients and their families.
We reaffirmed our heritage as an organization that was created by families, for families - an organization that would grow to provide a continuum of programs and services for individuals with mental retardation and developmental disabilities, helping each person achieve his or her potential and improving the quality of life for everyone in the community. We discovered that, if ARC didn’t exist today, “Families would come together just like they did when the whole agency started and try to figure out a way to get the needs of their children met.”
They would, in fact, reinvent ARC.
Yet even while so many lives are being fulfilled, we realized the need to tell the full ARC story – the story of our long-term commitment to understanding the needs and wants of our families, and our focus on developing solutions with and for them. By embracing the power and perspective of the family and our belief that together, with families, we can overcome barriers that are identified by the people who encounter them every day, we embrace the opportunities the next 50 years has to offer.
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