The Pergamijn Foundation supports and assists people with intellectual disabilities in the Central and Southern Limburg region. In total, this involves around 1,300 individuals across 26 locations.

During the summer period, Pergamijn wanted to treat all clients and staff to a delicious ice cream. A perfect project for the IJsmannetjes — but one that also required quite a bit of planning.

The challenges:

• The locations were spread across a wide area (from Herkenbosch to Hoensbroek), although they were often clustered.

• Some locations were day care centers where clients were present until 4:00 PM, while at other locations clients only arrived after 4:00 PM.

• We couldn’t start before 11:00 or 12:00 because many sites were still busy with client care during the morning.

• All locations were to be visited within one week.

• The time needed at each location was hard to estimate, as some clients had multiple disabilities, were not very mobile, or had difficulties communicating.

Together with Pergamijn, we created a schedule that allowed an ice cream cart to visit several locations each day between 11:00 AM and 6:00 PM.

The plan worked well. Only on the first day were we unable — due to a communication error on our part — to visit three locations at the scheduled time. We resolved this by deploying a second ice cream cart on the final day to visit those sites.

It also turned out to be a very rewarding assignment — at least according to the ice cream staff who carried it out. It’s truly heartwarming to see how people with severe disabilities can still enjoy each other’s company and something as simple as an ice cream.