Workshops: What They Are
Young people with disabilities and their parents kept asking for more. They wanted activities to fill the gaps left by school and other programs—encounters sustained over time, built on experiences shared together. Some women, young and not so young, also wanted to give a few hours a week to these young people, offering and receiving friendship. So we imagined a place: a large room with basic amenities, in a school, a parish, or a private home, easy for everyone to reach. Once a week, in the afternoon, we would gather there to be together while working.
How They Work
The number of young people might be five, seven, or more. The number of volunteer women varies too—though we've learned that ideally there's one adult to one young person. The time of day can shift. Most of all, the activities themselves change. Our main goal is simple: to be together peacefully, with something to gain for everyone. So the work we choose answers first to what the young people need. The activities can be very different. They can shift within a single afternoon, across a month, or over several months. They depend on the experience and skills of the women who lead, on the materials we have, on deadlines we set for ourselves.
But if something isn't working—if it bores people or exhausts them—we drop it fast and try something else. A game. A different kind of activity.
Even when we're working harder for a craft sale or a special celebration, we don't overdo it. Five o'clock tea is always welcome, with or without treats depending on diets. Jokes matter. Conversation matters. A group game at the end, organized maybe by the younger friends who sometimes arrive in the last half hour while the older women clean up. And you can imagine how much that kind of work matters in a workshop that's truly a workshop.
Read also: A Workshop Called the Beehive
What Happens
Beyond our main aim—being together well while working—there are many smaller goals that emerge naturally. For instance: when a new young person arrives, it's an event for everyone. A moment to live with real care and attention. Will he like us? Can he settle in? What does he want to do? What will he prefer? What are his gifts we haven't discovered yet? What frightens or bores him? Who among us is best suited to be close to him? And when we actually see his struggles fade, when that initial mysterious resistance vanishes—we feel the whole group grow stronger. The group opens its arms to welcome him. It becomes more solid precisely because of the effort it took to bring him in.
Then there are the Fede e Luce celebrations with stalls where our workshop young people show and sell everything they've made over months of work. There are craft sales held mostly on parish grounds, but also in welcoming homes and gardens.
What we do with the money depends on the situation. Sometimes there are running costs to cover. Sometimes the young people get a small wage—what they've truly earned as skilled workers. Or we might decide together with the families to support a person or charitable initiative we know and care about.
The Volunteer Women...
I should say something about these women friends: how happy they are to have this experience, how well they must work together, how flexible they need to be with tasks. They have to dig deep into their imagination, their modest skills sometimes—I count myself here—how they enjoy inventing things, transforming them, learning new work techniques alongside the young people, watching the fruits of their common effort take shape.
...and the Parents
The parents? Patient, faithful in bringing their children week after week—another task!—they're glad to leave them in good hands for a few hours. Glad to see them working, glad to see the practical results. The fathers sometimes come by and make repairs or improvements to the workshop space. The mothers pitch in during rough moments and sometimes make the five o'clock tea a little sweeter.
Conclusions
From this small workshop experience—now years long for some of us—we've seen results that feel largely positive, perhaps because we've kept things intimate in scale. We've watched very quiet, withdrawn friends become livelier, more talkative. Some restless, unfocused young people have calmed down through work that suited them. Young people unused to effort have grown passionate seeing something beautiful and saleable emerge from their own hands.
There have been some failures too. A friend who couldn't settle in. Someone who left because of fatigue or other reasons. Those moments saddened us. They made us wonder where we'd gone wrong. But they can't stop us from saying that the workshop experience has been good for us overall. We'd like to invite other women to try something like this and reach out to us if you think we can help.
We also want to ask anyone already doing similar work to write and tell us about your experience—your discoveries, the things you've made, everything that matters. Among these small workshops there should be real exchange. We think that's necessary to help them grow and stay useful and alive.
Anyone interested in this exchange can contact Ombre e Luci.
— Maria Teresa Mazzarotto, 1993