Companies in a team building class working with prisoners

Finding oneself in prison to rediscover oneself as a team. Learning to collaborate from those who are forced to share absolutely. Do team building with prisoners. After all, who better than they, sometimes confined in 4-square-metre cells with shifts for bathing or putting their feet up from bunk beds, can concretely demonstrate the value of mutual support? Welcome to the Alessandria prison, where companies can bring their employees to learn about coexistence, cooperation and restarting. Through a new experience of closeness, listening. But also of play. And of hands-on experience.

It is located between the new pastry laboratory, Fuga di Sapori Bakery 2.0, and the penitentiary bistro, originally a Franciscan convent, the space also dedicated to team building events. To inaugurate it in the coming days will be Iren luce gas e servizi, part of the Iren group, with ten employees. "But even before the inauguration, we are already gathering interest from a number of different realities," says Carmine Falanga, president of the Idee in fuga cooperative, for years committed to "creating a synergy between prison walls and businesses", wrote the Quirinal last year in the motivations for the honour of Cavaliere dell'Ordine al merito della Repubblica.

From the carpentry to the hop garden, for the production of beer inside the other penitentiary, to the pastry shop to the bistro to the catering service: "Good food, reduced cost," Falanga smiles, "and above all a social implication. Like the one that led Iren to book the 350 square metre laboratory for its next corporate event.

Instead of a luxurious spa, an unconnected hermitage or who knows what small island, colleagues will gather together - according to the instructions of each company - among kneading machines, planetary mixers and ovens. Guided by an expert trainer, they will face games and challenges - as in Masterchef - in the search for ingredients, in the preparation of doughs and then end up all together around the tables of the bistro, an integral part of the penitentiary but open to the city, to enjoy the dishes prepared.

The kitchen thus becomes a metaphor for challenges and little big lessons to be learned. The time of waiting, the division of tasks, the appreciation of individual aptitudes, listening. And then the ability to get back up after a fall. One (or more) days of team building, with young people who have understood their mistakes and are trying to seize a new chance in life, is intended to be for companies "a concrete sign in support of an activity capable of combining training, collaboration and social responsibility", explains Iren.