Activity offers, meant for people between 18 and 67 years of age, can be organized as sheltered workshops and activity centres. These are creative social pedagogical activities offered to people with physical or mental disabilities or with extensive social problems. 

The first sheltered workshop was founded in 1973 in Tórshavn. The Social Services are currently sponsoring five sheltered workshops and activity centres around the Faroe Islands. Around 190 people with special needs enjoy their daily routine in these sheltered workshops and centres.

These centres are intended for people who need support and help in their everyday life. Emphasis is placed on strengthening and developing communication skills and our protégés’ physiques and faculties. The work is organized in a way that offers opportunities to develop their personality, their social and physical skills.

Everyone wants to make a difference in their daily activities. It is, therefore, of great importance that people with physical or mental disabilities have a job to go to. Making objects that others enjoy makes this even more essential.

Activities in the sheltered activity centres and workshops differ from place to place. Still, something they all have in common is the annual Christmas sales, where workshops around the country can sell many different items that citizens have been making throughout the year. The Christmas sales are organized differently, but they have been held in each workshop’s premises for the past several years.

In addition to the importance of the sales for the operation, Christmas sales also are of great importance for those who have their daily routine in the activity centres and workshops. They have various tasks to perform and participate as best they can in the sales themselves, where they experience people – both known and unknown – coming by and buying the objects they have produced, thus supporting the work and helping to increase their self-respect and self-confidence.

The Christmas sales are also an opportunity to invite the public and focus on our work within the specialist area of the Social Services. Here we can show how our protégés create objects and which pedagogical working methods we are using. At the Christmas sales, all of us who work in the workshop on a daily basis will be able to display and talk about our work. We see many customers return yearly, but new customers are  also added. Visitors are often amazed to see how much our fellow citizens can do and the value of all the handmade items that they produced here.

In addition to making elves and various other items suitable for Christmas, angels have always been an essential part of Christmas sales. The angels notify us that Christmas is approaching; we slow down and start getting ready for Christmas.

The angels are all handmade and unique. We aim for the process of producing the objects to be creative, and to evolve and contribute to the development of competence and inventive abilities. There is a lot of work behind each angel. No single citizen creates the whole angel himself or herself, but everyone does their part. One makes the body, another the wings, a third the halo, etc. In this way, the angel shows how people with different characteristics can work and progress together. No one is able to do everything. Everyone can do something - and together we can do a lot.