A baker walks into a barbershop and sees a new employee among the staff: his name is Paul, and he has Down syndrome. The baker smiles, satisfied, unaware that the young man is there because of him. It's the closing scene of an awareness campaign aimed at businesses—and their customers—about hiring people with intellectual disabilities. The baker had set off a virtuous chain when he hired Simone as a shop assistant; she, too, has Down syndrome. Between them, the chain included a lawyer, a dentist, and a farmer, each of whom, inspired by the example, had hired John, Sophia, and Kate respectively, all with disabilities. It would be genuinely wonderful to see the dream of so many young people with intellectual disabilities come true exactly as we see it told and hoped for in the latest of Coordown's brilliantly conceived and carefully crafted awareness campaigns.
The advertisement, with international scope and titled The Hiring Chain (visible at http://www.hiringchain.org/), tells the story of a dream that's nothing special—unlike how we so often describe people with disabilities. It is a dream of full normalcy, something every human being deserves if they are able to pursue it. It is, after all, one of the explicitly inclusive goals in the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. True, it is not automatic, as the stories in this issue make clear. Mariangela Bertolini wrote years ago that people with mild intellectual disabilities—even those rarely recognized as such, unlike in the case of Down syndrome—"need to find reassuring places where those who listen to them, alert to their hidden difficulties, show them trust (…). Help them progress (…), become interpreters of their desires, helping them discover which ones they can make real." These are hardly small things, but wherever they take hold (and they can), they show not only the capacity to welcome and sensitivity, but above all great intelligence. They strengthen the human fabric of the company itself and of the whole community.