Giving Compass' Take:

• The Guardian reports on a town in Belgium called Geel, where residents have been opening up their homes to the mentally ill for hundreds of years, traced back to a church pilgrimage in the 13th century.

• What can Geel's example teach us about the charitable will of a community and the impact it can have on those in need? And what can we do to have more empathy for those with cognitive disabilities?

• Here's why the criminalization of the mentally ill in schools must stop.

Maria Lenaerts was seven years old when she came home from school one day to find a stranger at the kitchen table. It was September 1942 in Nazi-occupied Belgium.

The young man looked afraid. He did not say a word to her. “He was sitting at the table like this,” she recalls, hiding her head in her arms. “He didn’t understand anything.”

This was her first encounter with Jefkae Harbant, then an 18-year old with a learning disability and no place to call home. He was born in the French-speaking part of Belgium and did not speak a word of Dutch. Neither Maria nor her parents knew any French.

Despite the language barrier, Maria’s parents, who were cattle farmers in the Flemish lowlands, had decided to take the young man in. This was not only an act of wartime charity, but came from a centuries-old tradition of stretching out a hand to people on the margins of society.

For hundreds of years, residents in the Belgian town of Geel have been giving a home to strangers with severe mental health problems or learning disabilities.

This is not a bed for a night or a few weeks. Many boarders stay with the same family for years, often decades. Somehow a tradition from the age of Chaucer has survived and evolved into part of Flanders’ state healthcare system. In 2018, 205 people are Geel boarders, although home care is now only for those with mental health problems, not learning disabilities.

Read the full article about the town in Belgium where mentally ill people lodge with locals by Jennifer Rankin at theguardian.com.