«We couldn't frame what we had in mind for our children as rehabilitation for life,» says Silvana Giovannini, president of the association Ylenia e gli Amici Speciali. In 2007, a group of parents began a complex journey to build a life project for their adult children—now out of school and living with various cognitive and physical disabilities. The goal was to «foster social inclusion, employment, and housing; to break down the prejudices society holds against people with disabilities, especially cognitive ones, rooted largely in ignorance. We wanted our children to be active citizens—not merely recipients of state care and protection, but authors of their own lives.»
From the start, the parents themselves had to roll up their sleeves to make the venture work and keep it sustainable. The association's first step (named for Ylenia, a young person with a disability from the founding group who was meant to participate but died, and whom they chose to honor) was renting an apartment in Corviale. On weekends they ran autonomy workshops; on weekday afternoons, small cooking classes taught by a retired hospitality instructor.
A winning move came when they began making dog treats alongside their regular baked goods—a sideline that proved wildly popular and deeply motivated the young people involved. «We were tapping into their interests and attention,» the president explains. «We knew they loved dogs.» Dog owners kept asking for more, even custom birthday cakes. «In 2018, we applied for EU funding and pitched ourselves as a real bakery business. The concept won support, and we trained fifteen young people—partly at Tor Carbone hospitality school, for some six hundred hours.» That's when Master Bakers was born: a small, efficiently run operation (purchased by the association itself, after little help came from the authorities) with a ground floor kitchen and packing area; a lower level for technical facilities and storage; and an elevator connecting them, so people with mobility challenges face no barriers.
The hardest part? «Seeing yourselves as coworkers. You have to collaborate to finish a batch, to keep yourselves afloat.»
The hardest part? «Seeing yourselves as coworkers. You have to collaborate to finish a batch, to keep yourselves afloat.»What's been hardest? Beyond chasing grants—something the group has often handled through mutual aid initiatives that left no one behind—the real challenge for the young people is learning to see themselves as colleagues. «There's no room for likes or dislikes in a model like ours that relies on the group to compensate for each person's strengths and limits. You have to collaborate to finish a batch, to keep yourselves afloat.» About thirty young people—ranging from age eighteen to fifty—work two daily shifts, Monday through Friday, alongside staff. On Saturdays, two volunteer families cover the shop to keep costs down. The workshop also hosts trainees from protected employment programs. Beyond retail sales, crucial orders come from a nearby hotel and bakery.
For housing, the association created a foundation called 31 Small Homes (the house number of their first rented apartment) that has purchased three apartments in the same neighborhood for easy access. They're waiting for authorization and funding under Italy's Law 112 (for life after parents) to finally establish stable shared households. Here too, practice runs matter: leaving home and learning to live together require careful handling.
The two large shop windows create a direct view from the actual pastry kitchen through the biscuit-packing area, visible from the sales counter and street. The counter itself doubles as a workspace for marketing campaigns and promotion studies: a beautiful effect—a window into a reality that refuses to stay at the margins. OL