Food really means life for youngsters

Hospitality -inspired free rehab includes great food and wine, lots of hard work and training, tons of Love and unbelievable success

The Muccioli family used to run a big hotel in Rimini in its heyday – the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, when the resort was the ‘Lido of Europe’ and got millions of visitors wishing to experience the ‘Dolce Vita’

Well the vita wasn’t always dolce – particularly in a very seasonal industry and particularly in hotels and catering and particularly in a destination attracting young people with money to spend.

Although lots of people made successful careers out of tourism, many fell by the wayside, drugs the cause of much grief.

And Vincenzo Muccioli determined to do something about it.

As it happened he had the means – in the form of the 200+ hectare hillside estate at San Patrignano just outside of Rimini. He also had the money and the contacts to make it happen, and he had a vision of a self-help community.

More importantly he was a Romangnolo man, and as such, whatever the crazy scheme – he was determined that he would make it work and nobody was going to stop him.

The basis of San Patrignano appears to be simple – use the land and the local culture to create whatever wealth it can – in the form of grapes and fruit and milk and flour and many other good things. Make this into wonderful , supremely fine products and market them superbly.

And create and run this operation with the assistance of broken young people who will provide their labour and their thought and their care in return for their true self esteem and the repair to their broken lives.

There is only one phrase that applies to this activity – it’s Win, Win, Win – and all those Wins just keep multiplying, sustainably.

The international community at ‘SanPat’ as it’s lovingly known, is now down to 1,350 young men and young women. At one stage it was over 2,000. The organization is simple – each room of about a dozen makes every decision jointly.

Everybody works, either in the kitchens producing great cakes and bread and cheeses, or in one of the many other occupations in this vertically-integrated self-sufficient organization.

And/or they get trained – not just in the food industry but in many other activities also – for instance there is a fabulous internet marketing suite that many a blue chip organization would be proud of, and a print works and kennels – the list goes on.

Nobody pays, but then on the other hand nobody gets paid. And everybody learns, a new job perhaps, but more importantly how to interact with each other – at work, at play, in sadness and in joy.

There are no religions and there are all religions, in particular respect is practiced both for each other and the world around – for instance before each superb daily communal meal there is a moment of silence, but no prayer. And after everyone has eaten, the staff that served them, proud of their jobs, eat too.

Community members make what must seem to be a big commitment – they usually stay for at least 4 years and couples are split up into gender groups. Relationships are started and conducted with great care, visibility and counseling from another community member.

There is a long procedure to get into the community and new members are not accepted without the community being convinced of their seriousness.

What do they (and their families) get out of it? The success rate vis a vis drug addiction after 5 years has been identified at over 70% by Bologna University – which is astonishingly high. But more importantly the family and self-esteem problems appear to have been resversed.

And what does the rest of the world get? An astonishingly good, all organic, range of products from superb cheeses, great cured meats, fabulous breads, Panetone, biscuits, soaps and much much more – over 1,000 new people every 4 years contributing their new skills to society.

Of course there are critics. Some say that San Patrignano has been too brutal, they say that the tax breaks that the foundation gets are too big, they say that young addicts get addicted to San Patrignano in place of their drugs, they say that the foundation thrives on free labour.

But at the end of the day, addiction is the epidemic of our times, and most of the standard ‘cures’ are expensive and short term except of course for Narcotics Anonymous where it appears that members have an average time of 9 years ‘clean’ – but because of the nature of the organization no details are available as to success rates.

The fact is that San Patrignano works like alchemy – turning what looks like base metal into gold. Something like that much quoted quote on the Statue of Liberty "Give me your tired and weary…" truly comes into practice at SanPat.

And as an example of good practice in the hospitality industry, it has no peer.

Valere Tjolle

@ValereTjolle

[email protected]

Antidote to mass tourism         Special sustainable tourism offer