On a brilliant April morning, we left Rome. The highway stretched ahead, nearly empty, bordered now and then by the white and blue Apennines rising against an even deeper blue sky. We drove through Teramo and continued to Giulianova. The sea appeared suddenly beneath the hospital piazza—a brilliant, crystalline blue. We ignored it, turned right, and entered the administrative offices of the social cooperative "Piccola Opera Caritas", born from the vision and dedication of Father Serafino Colangeli, a Capuchin friar, thirty-eight years earlier.
Father Serafino founded the organization as a Christian response to the territory's deepest needs. It won immediate recognition from both church and state. From the start, the foundation committed itself to human dignity before catechesis. In the 1960s and 70s, the loneliest children were the sons and daughters of factory workers who had migrated north for jobs—often marginalized, often suffering severe psychological distress. For them and for other disabled youth, a small group of women coordinated by Father Serafino opened the first remedial classes in a modest villa. This was the beginning of what would become the Institute.
Time changed circumstances. Migration slowed or shifted patterns. School integration laws ensured that all school-age children were placed in regular classrooms.
The foundation turned its attention to young people with psychiatric disabilities, mental retardation, and other profound fragilities—those unable to enter the workforce on their own. In 1985, working with local health authorities, it established the Medico-Psycho-Pedagogical Institute (MPP). Today it serves roughly three hundred young people—some as residential students, some as day students, some through outpatient and home-based care. One hundred eighty staff members support them: administrators, medical doctors, psychologists, educators, teachers, and auxiliary workers.
From the start, the founders held a conviction that guided everything: recovery, education, training, and work had to be rooted in each person's expressive capacity—even those most disadvantaged. This conviction gave birth to the artistic craft workshops that today occupy about three hundred square meters of welcoming spaces, where small groups of young people work alongside one or two master craftspeople.
In 1987, the first social solidarity cooperative was established. The leaders had noticed that young people, once they completed apprenticeships, rarely found work in the outside labor market. Despite their craftsmanship, their fragility remained. They still needed a more protected workplace.
The workshop masters were trained—and still are—from art academies or universities. They have the skill to direct the work, ensure quality, and guide the young people toward steady improvement in their technique. The workshops produce genuine artisan work: hand-molded and fired ceramics (in three stages of production), decorated terracotta, woodwork, leather goods, papier-mâché, and mosaic. There are also agricultural and horticultural activities.
In 1991, under Law 381, the cooperative formally became a registered Type B social cooperative. Today it has more than seventy members. Disabled workers make up more than 30 percent. The membership also includes some collaborators, external workers, and volunteer workshop masters.
The workshop masters are hired by the Foundation as rehabilitation workers. They teach, coordinate the labor, and develop new products. The disabled workers commit themselves fully alongside some unemployed young people hired for their artisan skills. The disabled workers receive regular wages; the state covers their insurance contributions.
A separate team handles sales distribution and constantly seeks new commissions and new venues for display. The latest innovation is the network of "Solidarity Shops" in various Italian cities, where products from social cooperatives and other nonprofits are sold.
Mimmo Rega, director of all the cooperative's workshops and our guide that day, believes the future of social cooperatives rests on this growing network of sales points and on the continuous exchange of practical knowledge and mutual aid among initiatives.
Financial problems in this sector are not easily solved. The Piccola Opera Caritas cooperative cannot achieve full financial independence. Only an annual subsidy from the Foundation allows it to balance its books.
We moved quickly—lunch and our departure were approaching—touring every space. Looking at the smiling faces, the hands reaching out to us, the cheeks offered for goodbye kisses, we saw the truth: here, work brings joy, not exhaustion. We noticed how differently these artisans work. Some repeat the same decorative motif they learned long ago. Others invent new designs constantly. Some prefer a single, muted color palette; others combine brilliant, contrasting hues. One person incises delicate, precise scrolls into the wood of a lectern; another frames a mirror with large anemones and roses in broad strokes of brown or gold.
Final farewells, final glances, the workshops emptied, the refectory filled.
Then came another surprise. Upstairs, we discovered a rich library of university texts and a large exhibition hall—both created by the Cultural Center S. Francesco, another initiative of the same Foundation. But that is a story for another time.
Among the volumes and tables of the library, we found Father Serafino Colangeli himself—white-haired, candid in name and nature. Entirely unsurprised by our unexpected arrival, he smiled, embraced us, and blessed us.
Edited by the Staff, 2001
For more information, contact Mimmo Rega, Piccola Opera Caritas, Via Scarafoni 3, 64021 Giulianova (TE), or visit the website
Labor Rights for Disabled People
The necessity of targeted job placement is clearly established by Law No. 68 of March 12, 1999, titled "Labor Rights for Disabled People." Article 2 defines targeted job placement as "the set of technical and support tools that enable proper evaluation of disabled persons' work capacity and their placement in suitable positions, through job analysis, forms of support, affirmative action, and resolution of problems connected with the environments, instruments, and interpersonal relationships in daily places of work and social interaction."