When mentally handicapped young people leave mandatory schooling—well done or poorly done—instruction ends. Then what? The available programs fall short in both quality and number. So when we heard about the Vicenza Center as something genuinely original, we went to see it ourselves. We offer it to you as a model, a challenge to break free from passive acceptance of the status quo.
Can a center for the mentally handicapped embody both a spirit of love and rigorous method?
Bruno is a Down syndrome boy. Blue eyes, blond hair, sometimes solemn and unreachable, sometimes lit by a radiant smile.
"Want to show us how you work?" asks Egle, our guide through the Center.
Bruno's smile opens wide. He leads us up the stairs. The ceramics workshop is empty—it's lunchtime—but large and bright, full of remarkable work. He walks to a cupboard, takes out an apron, puts it on, sits at his bench, picks up a piece of clay. He pinches off a small ball, flattens it into a thin sheet, crumples it lightly. Another sheet, arranged around the first. In two intense, silent minutes, he has made a perfect rose—one of those delicate pieces that, once fired and glazed, will become an expensive decoration. The harmony. The proportions. The way his little finger touches each petal edge with such care, giving it that tender wavering curve. I stand watching the gray rose unfold, confused, absorbed, enchanted. And we call these people disabled? Bruno looks up, hands me the finished rose, breaks into another smile.
We came to see this Center because someone told us it was worth the trip. They were right.
What sets it apart from other centers we've visited is its remarkable combination of professional expertise and genuine affection for the students. The students are mentally handicapped young people aged fourteen to thirty-four who can manage at least one basic daily task; the center has no architectural access for severely motor-impaired students.
The professionalism runs deep—not just in teaching the crafts the young people practice (ceramics, tailoring, photography, horticulture) but in educational methods too: music therapy, dance therapy for body expression, psychomotor education, and more.
Walk through the workshops, classrooms, corridors, and you would never guess it was a center for handicapped youth. There is freshness here, attention to detail, a warm kind of orderliness, images and colors you find in the bedrooms of children in good families, in the classrooms of thoughtful, non-oppressive schools.
Walk through the workshops and you feel the freshness, the care in every detail, a warm kind of mess—the images and colors you see in children's bedrooms in good families, in the classrooms of intelligent, non-repressive schools.
Walk through the workshops and you feel the freshness, the care in every detail, a warm kind of mess—the images and colors you see in children's bedrooms in good families, in the classrooms of intelligent, non-repressive schools.How does such an uncommon union take shape—high professional standards combined with the genuine human warmth and affection of the instructors and administrators toward these seventy young people with intellectual and psychological difficulties?
At the source, decades ago, was a Franciscan friar, Father Eletto Bottega, who in 1947 began helping marginalized people, especially unemployed women. The story of the Foundation's growth from a small knitting and quilting workshop in an old building in central Vicenza to today's Center, with its structures, gardens, greenhouses, workshops, and farm, is compelling—but we'll pass over it. Instead, let's trace the recent development of the Franciscan Charitas Foundation, which, we should note, has no formal connection to the Franciscan Order or to Charitas proper.
The current Special Professional Training Center was founded in 1970, with about twenty young people aged fourteen and up. The emphasis has always been psychophysical education and the development of each young person's personality and potential, even as they receive professional training to the degree possible.
Back then, says director Egle Bottega, Italy had no research institutes or specialized institutions we could turn to. There were only scattered initiatives—small ANFFAS groups, the Capodarco community.
We started with a ceramics workshop, since the industry was active in the area. But we soon realized that work alone wasn't enough. Young people with motor difficulties, visual or hearing problems—they needed different kinds of stimulation. Some who could read and write a little were forgetting it. Many who came from mandatory schooling couldn't read or write at all, so we created pre-literacy activities. When we asked for guidance, people would discourage us: at fourteen or fifteen, they said, nothing more could be done. So we started psychomotor activities. An association formed around the Center—three people who made it their life's work, and twenty-two others providing professional services.
Everyone who works at the Center goes through a period of "getting to know us" first. If they decide to stay, they do so from a moral, human, Christian impulse—and they work under a formal professional contract, following the methods we've developed over the years. Everyone deepens their chosen specialization, studying abroad if necessary—we've sent people to London, Paris, Heidelberg, Argentina.
As for volunteers: we learned that unless they're well trained and committed for substantial time, they create more problems than solutions, especially given the delicate emotional world of handicapped young people.
The young people receive high-level technical services. You only need to see the smile, the touch, the embrace when they greet an instructor to understand the affection between them. But what happens when they leave? How does the working world receive them? What is the Center's relationship with the outside, with institutions?
That's where the real problems arise, Egle says. Our external relationships are good. For thirty young people in the professional courses, tuition is paid by the Region. Forty others come through agreements with their home municipalities. Now, under the new regional law, the USL will handle payment—we hope no problems arise.
But job placement is brutally difficult.
The rhythm of these young people's work is fundamentally different from the world outside. The work we do—aimed at human development and social growth—is often misunderstood: "This is a vocational school? Get the kids to learn a trade, even repetitive, mechanical work!" But those looking for that outcome won't find it here. We've learned from experience that the work our young people do must first be understood as ergotherapy—therapeutic activity—and only then, if possible, as an entry into a profession.
But what happens when they leave the center? How does the working world receive them? What is the relationship with the outside, with institutions?
But what happens when they leave the center? How does the working world receive them? What is the relationship with the outside, with institutions?We push for integration into life, for connections with the outside world, as much as each young person can manage. For instance, we ask parents to send their children to the Center by public transport.
The relationship with the outside world, especially with families, is crucial to us—it determines the young person's whole condition. We've learned that without engaged parents, we can't do our work. So we shifted our relationship with families from the merely human and spontaneous level of emotional support—which drained our energy without helping the young people—to a professional level. When a family applies to enroll their child, they first meet with our psychologist, who prepares a report for the entire education team.
The team drafts a set of questions, then we have a collective meeting with the family. At the start of the school year, we hold a meeting with all families where instructors explain their goals and how collaboration will work. From September through February comes an observation period: each staff member analyzes each young person, then we combine all those observations. At the end of this study period, we create a group program aimed at the individual needs of each person.
In summer, we take the young people to the sea for two weeks. We close in August.
The picture of the Center that emerges from our visit and from the words of director Egle Bottega grows richer as we learn about the various activities, the techniques of physical rehabilitation and psychological development. It confirms what we sensed: the Center operates at a high technical level with genuine human warmth. And as we reflect on it, a second characteristic emerges—one that proves to be the foundation of the first: the Center is not run by a single leader with subordinates. It is led by a true educational team whose members share a powerful common purpose rooted in moral conviction. Here, the tensions, rivalries, power struggles that plague so many institutions simply don't seem to take hold. The result is a Center of remarkable efficiency, built on a relationship of trust between those who run it and those who come.
- by Sergio Sciascia, 1983
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