La madre terra
Organic products WORKING FOR SOCIETY
La Madre Terra is our product brand, on the market ever since 1987.
The band name, meaning Mother Earth, is now firmly established and. as well as its reputation for top quality organic products it expresses the commitment of all those people, including those with disabilities, who have recovered their dignity in work of a very special kind in which no one is rejected and everyone is important.
The choice of working organically was also born of our desire to realise “new heavens and a new earth”, precisely because the Creator of humankind is also the Creator of the environment in which humankind lives and both are dear to Him.
La Pietra Scartata (The Rejected Stone) is the name of the workshop in which every day operators, qualified technicians and people with various conditions work together and help each other.
This workshop is part of the social cooperative La Fraternità set up by the Pope John XXIII Community, that for many years has been working in the vast realm of poverty and marginalisation through direct sharing, a commitment to removing the causes of injustice and non-violent action.
The protected workshop La Pietra Scartata
In 1987 Pino Pasolini, father figure of one of the Pope John XXIII Association family homes, together with Father Oreste Benzi, that "tireless apostle of charity”, as he was called by Pope John Paul II, had a prophetic insight to create a place in which people rejected by society could recover their dignity through work and building relationships. La Pietra Scartata is therefore, first and foremost, a place of welcoming and sharing through work, work consisting of processing and marketing organic products, work performed alongside the least, those rejected stones normally disdained by the world of work.
Now some 35 people are working on the premises, 20 of whom have been welcomed in as a result of their physical or mental disorders, a team of 10 operators with various responsibilities, some young people released from prison to serve alternative penalties and, from time to time, groups of young people wishing to experience the joy of diversity in a shared working environment.
This fascinating mix of people and the way they relate to each other is the strength and most valuable resource of La Pietra Scartata.
La Pietra Scartata also serves as an alternative economic model to the current ridiculous situation in which everything is permitted, justified, sacrificed and accepted in the name of the profit motive. This workshop provides an alternative to the overbearing might of the multinational corporations that condition our tastes, fashions and the prices we are prepared to pay. We are fully aware that this project involves many difficulties, but over the years, overcoming these has born witness to its feasibility. This is why we are such proud survivors, despite the arrival of the global giants for which we can only be a minor stumbling block, trusting that, by working for a better, more just society for everyone, we will manage to carry on this work.
This requires a constant commitment to ensuring that what we have achieved becomes firmly rooted over time to be the living hope for those who no longer have hope.
This is why we need your support too.
Come on, are you with us?*