Italy – The cookies of inclusion

Jacopo Corona tells us about the experience of inclusion in the “Frolla” biscuit factory >>> VIDEO

JOURNALIST
It’s a pity you can’t smell these cookies, because they smell of goodness. The credit is all of a special ingredient: them. This is “Frolla”: a biscuit factory in the province of Ancona where ten special kids work. It has now also become a bar. And this is where I meet Elisa and Marco.

ELISA
Some say that we are numbers, instead we are useful for everything. I was always discriminated against by the peers I had. But it doesn’t matter to me, I’ve always fought against everyone and everything. In fact, before coming here I talked about it with my mother: “Where will I go to work?” In the end I’m here.

JOURNALIST
Because you also make money here.

ELISA
Yup.

JOURNALIST
It is a real job.

ELISA
Yes, the pennies are needed. Then I give them to mom, it’s a fundamental thing. And this makes me so happy because at least I’m useful. For mom, for dad, for my sister, I also have a dog.

JOURNALIST
Do you also put music on to make them?

ELISA
Yup.

JOURNALIST
Do cookies come better with music?

ELISA
Yup.

JOURNALIST
But you don’t dance with your cookies …

ELISA
Eh no eh!

JOURNALIST
In the laboratory also Mirco found a job. He was a chef who after a very serious road accident lost the use of his legs and partly of his hands.

MIRCO
We immediately entered into symbiosis precisely due to the fact that my shortcomings are compensated for by them. Where the legs don’t work, maybe, I have good legs in them, good hands in them.

JOURNALIST
What opportunity does “Frolla” represent for you?

MIRCO
Eh, the opportunity to return to work. It gives me the opportunity to work with a smile.

JOURNALIST
“Frolla” is more than a job: it’s a real family. Do you like working with Mirco?

ELISA
Much. The thing I like is that we get along well, that is important.

ANOTHER BOY
She is right. Eh (to Elisa), I love you!

ELISA
We are a big family because in a job it is better to establish friendship. It is essential because without friendships and without love, without anything, what job is it? It’s just to say “you were just there”. Eh!

JOURNALIST
The father of this family is Jacopo; a 26-year-old pastry chef who came up with the whole project.

ELISA
For us he is a brother. Everything he does for us no one else would ever do. And in fact he is so special, and we all love him very, very much. I have a fire inside that … thanks to Jacopo it expands.

JOURNALIST
What a beautiful story! And Jacopo Corona is here!

RENZO
Now let’s steal Jacopo from the TV stage. Not without first thanking TV2000 for this nice service aired some time ago on its channels. Jacopo, thank you for being here with us. The footage showed us a really beautiful story, as the reporter said, and interesting. Would you like to briefly tell us how it started?

JACOPO
Hello everyone! It is always a pleasure to share ideas with you. We started – as a time frame – three and a half years ago, because “Frolla” was born as an activity, as a production workshop on 12 May 2018. It comes mainly from a story of friendship which is mine and that of Gianluca Di Lorenzo, another founding partner with me of this reality. It was born first of all for the need to create work and above all to insert in a social context the world of disability, then make a fusion between the job’s world, in this case of the pastry shop, which is the field I take care of, and the social world, which is the field that Gianluca deals with. We did some kind of fusion, both as friendship but also as skills. From there, this idea was practically born, of this cookie that creates inclusion.

RENZO
Listen, when it comes to job inclusion of a person with disabilities, and especially with intellectual disabilities, sometimes you risk falling into a misunderstanding, as if to say, “paternalistic”: where the inserted person is not really seen as a business resource, but only as someone to help; a way in which the company fulfills its duty of social responsability. But in your enterprise it seems to me that you are going far beyond this concept, right?

JACOPO
It is true, because we first of all, as the central idea of ​​the project, we don’t have the world of disability. The central idea of ​​the project is to sell the quality of the product. So we worked a lot about product quality, because we believe that true freedom, the real added value of “Frolla” is the quality. In the sense that the cookies – our flagship product, then obviously over time we have expanded our proposals – are made with recipes, with raw materials of the highest quality. This is because we didn’t want to and we still do not want to fall into the “trap” of “depending on pity”. That is, we don’t want people to come to us because we pity people, because there is a social purpose. We must enhance the qualities of the guys who are inserted, kids who have disabilities certainly severe, but the concept is that we have to be good to make them autonomous, in a concept of inclusion. True inclusion is not creating a situation in which people come to make a donation, we don’t accept these things here. We want to sell our products because we are clever at it and then we have to be even better in knowing how to communicate it and above all in knowing how to enhance what is seen as a deficit, as an added value.

RENZO
Please listen: on the basis of this experience of you and your team, can you tell us some points that you consider fundamental for those who, like you, want to do a true inclusion at work? What needs to be done and what should not be done?

JACOPO
We basically base ourselves first on a concept of sharing. For me, sharing is a fundamental value, in the sense both as values ​​but also as ideas, as an opening towards society. Here we try to share our choice of life, because basically it is a choice of life, and make it “normal”. Why is it seen today, right? Many times they tell us good for what you do for these guys, but it’s not that we are good: we have chosen this life because we like it first of all, for us it is something that gratifies us. And then the whole concept that we have as “openness: we always say that at “Frolla” we don’t have the doors open: we don’t have them at all, because we must be the first to welcome; consequently people must enter a free context in which they can quietly express themselves, as ideas, but also as practice. What they think is best they can carry it safely, as a value within a cooperative which is actually a community or rather a family.