Since 1985, the social cooperative "Spazio Aperto" in Milan has brought together young people with disabilities and those without disabilities to work side by side.
When Law 381/91 took effect, the original cooperative divided into two separate social cooperatives: Type A and Type B.
Type A cooperative, "Spazio Aperto Servizi," focused on supporting disabled people in schools, and gradually expanded into educational, care, and residential services. Today it manages:
- Home care for disabled people
- Home support for families with at-risk children
- Care assistance for disabled students in schools
- Day centers for disabled people
- Community housing for minors placed by the Milan juvenile court
As an ANFFAS affiliate, the Type B cooperative "Spazio Aperto" continued its work (which we reported on back in 1989) and expanded across several sectors:
- Cleaning services
- Small-scale waste collection
- Management of recycling facilities
- Data entry and electronic filing
- Assembly and packaging workshop
The gardening division grew so substantially that by late 1995 it became its own independent social cooperative, named "Viridalia."
Spazio Aperto is no longer an ANFFAS affiliate but has long operated as a fully autonomous social enterprise. It works primarily with private clients while maintaining partnerships with health authorities and municipalities to place young people facing barriers to employment.
All workers at the cooperative (except in the workshop) are regularly employed and work alongside non-disabled staff in teams spread across various contracts.
Work teams typically consist of three to four people. The team leader ensures quality work and oversees team dynamics. Each team includes one young worker and one or two skilled employees. The disadvantaged workers placed range in age and include people with physical disabilities, intellectual disabilities, and youth at risk of marginalization—though the cooperative also serves other populations facing hardship.
In the assembly and packaging workshop, alongside regularly hired workers, the cooperative also accepts young people referred by municipal and health authority social services who are in a "work training pathway." This pathway aims at regular employment with Spazio Aperto (moving into the sectors listed above) or with outside employers. Staff from Spazio Aperto and representatives from the referring agency monitor the placement and provide necessary support.
Pay and contributions
Spazio Aperto pays all workers—whether facing disadvantage or not—according to the current collective labor agreement for social cooperatives. Based on role, position, and responsibility, every employee is classified at the appropriate contractual level.
The cooperative carries mandatory workplace injury insurance through INAIL, as required by law, plus additional injury and liability coverage from a major insurance company to best protect all workers. Social security contributions are paid regularly as required.
Pension treatment
Pension rules for disabled workers are complex and constantly changing. Broadly speaking, disability allowances depend on the degree of disability, while formal disability pensions are reduced if earnings exceed certain thresholds—thresholds that are quite low. Workers at Spazio Aperto, with the pay, contributions, and pension protections in place, typically exceed these limits.
Financial sustainability
Spazio Aperto is a private enterprise that, thanks to strong leadership, has recently achieved profitable budgets.
For public funding, the cooperative applies for grants under European, national, and regional programs available to social enterprises and for-profit firms alike.
In recent years, grants increasingly target productive and employment outcomes. Projects—not organizations—are evaluated for feasibility and impact, and funding follows the strongest proposals, regardless of nonprofit status.
Network and advocacy
Spazio Aperto operates in the Milan area. While we do much for and with the disadvantaged workers we employ, our direct influence on broader social policy remains limited. But we work within networks. Our cooperative is a founding member of Sistema Imprese Sociali (S.I.S.), a provincial consortium of over 50 social cooperatives in Milan. That network strengthens our voice. S.I.S. itself joins a national consortium bringing together roughly fifty provincial networks across Italy—creating a critical mass of nearly 1,000 social cooperatives. Across the country, in many sectors, these cooperatives deliver social integration, job placement, care, and training. Through this structure, our demands and those of our partners are heard with force, unity, and real effect.
Job placement
Spazio Aperto attends carefully to the needs of all its workers and pursues its core mission: placing disadvantaged people into work. The cooperative employs a "job placement and social responsibility coordinator" who works with workers, families, and referring agencies as needed. The cooperative also collaborates with a psychologist who addresses psychological dimensions of training and working relationships.
Choosing markets
A constant focus of the cooperative—and reason for its diverse sectors—is choosing markets where workers can be placed according to their abilities, potential, and learnable skills. For example, someone with intellectual disability might struggle with data entry but could thrive in waste collection, cleaning, or the workshop. A person with physical disability might excel at computer work or clerical tasks rather than fieldwork.
- Vittorio Paoli, 2001
(Board Member of the cooperative)
"My prayer is often a word very common on the lips of my Brazilian friends, 'valeu'—it was worth it; life has not truly disappointed me. Do not search through my life for greatness or misery, sin or grace made transparent, because everything is swept away and destroyed (or transfigured) and what remains is the relationship with my Friend. I am not able to look back and measure my life: the relationship is present, it is the water of a river flowing, and the water that passed before your eyes yesterday is no longer there. To take stock of my life I would have to row against the current; but the trouble is I have no oars. The old man is not at home in this time; he lives in a small boat without oars or motor, gliding slowly on a peaceful river toward the estuary. Do not wait for him on the shore, for he will not return; how could he return if he has no oars? He is very happy, very well, because from the shore one sees him only; but my FRIEND is with him and knows the waterways well. I confess the old man has his moments of crisis: he remembers certain times when he was a good rower, and then he searches for the oars with some distress and the little boat begins to rock dangerously. Then he grows calm, sits on the wooden bench, calls himself a fool, laughs at himself, and sometimes weeps, because he discovers he has not trusted the FRIEND completely."
- Arturo Paoli, 2001
(To friends on the occasion of his fiftieth anniversary of ordination)
