Work is more than a paycheck. It's a way to discover what you can do and build human connection. This conviction drove the founders of Cooperative Spazio Aperto, established five years ago in Milan to help people with physical and mental disabilities enter the workforce and take part in active community life.
Thirty people formed the first core: ten parents of young people in the ANFFAS program, ten employees, and ten volunteer friends. Born from ANFFAS itself, the cooperative received crucial support from the parent organization as it took shape.
From the start, the cooperative divided into four working divisions: agriculture, workshop, cleaning services, and school support for disabled students. Each operates by the same principle: find ways to develop each person's abilities, help them integrate into school, and above all, into work.
Francesco Alemanno, the cooperative's current president, and Vittorio Paoli, a board member, told us about what they've achieved and the challenges they face every day.
Francesco explains: "Our agriculture division—maintaining parks and gardens, building terraces, installing irrigation systems—started in the fields at ANFFAS's Cascina Biblioteca farm, partly thanks to European Social Fund money. Before we began, we studied the market and met with company directors. We went door to door. We sent 300 letters and got two replies. We started with two clients. One gave us work briefly; the other still does."
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"We now have one technician and two disabled workers on regular payroll; fifteen more ANFFAS participants work with us, doing tasks they can manage independently. Agronomists and graduates handle the technical side and are paid for their work. Financially, this division is healthy—its earnings support the others. It may be strongest because the people who started stayed, and they meet regularly to review how things are going." The workshop division—which does assembly work, packaging, hand and machine finishing—is where the cooperative would like to place more young people. It's also the toughest to manage.
The morning we visited, the workshop was folding and punching holes in plastic bags. The client had supplied the machine. The kids threaded cord through each hole, tied it in a knot, and it became a handle. The young workers moved with focus and quiet pride in what they were doing.
"Sometimes," Vittorio says, "if a job lasts just one day, they barely find their rhythm. Other times, if the same work goes on too long, they get bored. But mostly they work hard and use what they can do." That commitment matters—it's no small reward for the effort and worry of people dedicated to human growth.
"Before we brought the young people in," Vittorio recalls, "we ran the workshop ourselves in a couple of rooms ANFFAS lent us. We knocked on doors at toy companies, packaging firms, pharmaceutical plants. Once work came in, we hired ten young people—and quickly needed more. We moved to this bigger space, close to the subway, convenient for clients too, not far from the highway."
The workshop faces a constant problem: the young workers alone cannot keep up enough speed to turn a real profit. The cooperative depends on volunteers who are not always there and often not enough. A second, harder problem hit recently. "By law," Vittorio says, "we had to send home thirty young people who were getting symbolic pay, because they weren't formally hired. We could keep only the ten whom the city of Milan had awarded work stipends while they waited for contracts. Those ten work seven hours a day, supported by three staff. Among the thirty we had to turn away, many will never get those stipends—hiring them full-time seems impossible. Then a second path opened: they could join the workshop unpaid, for training and rehabilitation, and we'd cover insurance only. That's how the young people started coming back."
In the cleaning division, two disabled workers and seven or eight others, some with social difficulties, make up the team. It runs and breaks even, but the disabled young people don't quite feel they're doing real work. "They're less motivated here than elsewhere," Vittorio notes. "It feels too much like housework and not enough like a job. So from what we've learned, the agriculture division seems best suited to what the young people—even the most disabled—actually need and want."
The school support division exists to help schools assist young people with physical and mental disabilities throughout the school day—flexible support that can include tutoring. The cooperative also provides home care assistance, though we couldn't meet with those responsible to describe how it runs. Truth is, getting a complete picture of Spazio Aperto is hard. It's a complex, evolving reality. Many important things may not have gotten the attention they deserve. We hope at least to have sparked curiosity, interest, and hope about an initiative that for many could be a real solution.
Francesco Alemanno and Vittorio Paoli, generous with their time and insight, are ready to share more.
- Edited by Luisa Brambilla and Annamaria De Rino, 1989
Spazio Aperto Coop. S.r.l.Operations: Viale delle Rimembranze di Lambrate, 7 20134 MILANO - TEL. 02/2663324
Website: spazioaperto.coop, Facebook page
The photographs in this article showing the cooperative's work divisions are taken from the cooperative's own promotional brochure.