the
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foundation
The Foundation was established by Manuele D'Oppido and Vanessa Bozzacchi, who, driven by their experience with Leone, became aware of the significant gaps and lacks existing for children and young people with neural developmental disorders. The Foundation’s aim is creating adequate, functional learning and entertaining spaces for those affected with neural developmental disorders, with particular attention to the autistic spectrum and supporting their families.
WHO WE ARE
Parents, sector operators, communications professionals, experts, people who have experiences in relation to disabilities and people who have the desire to know, learn and help. All united by the will to create a functional, playful and necessary reality, and to raise people’s awareness about diversity, in order to integrate children, young people and their families in society and in “socialty”.
vanessa
I am 47 years old, I am the mother of Leone, I have experienced firsthand the feeling “this cannot happen to me”. I got almost immediately into a vortex, an unknown and scary world, because what you don't know is scaring. As time passed, with strength and pain, but much desire to know and do always more, I have worked on it and met people who have made me see the light you need to believe in your son, to want more for him and all the children like him. I met Manuele, now my husband, almost 4 years ago, an incredible man who had the strength and the desire to discover the world of Leo. With us he got through the difficulties and pain of very difficult years, becoming my strength and my son's strength, up to deciding to create a foundation. One of my big wishes today is to imagine my son safe in a tomorrow when I will not be there anymore. Imagine him able, autonomous, organized, but above all integrated and understood by a world that in 2022 cannot not know and not accept diversity.
manuele
I am 42 years old and since 4 years my life is filled by a child who doesn't speak, who is very distracted and at the beginning was not looking in my eyes. But time and the only universal language, love, have made my life wonderful and filled my heart with purity, because we have chosen us. Today I could not imagine a life without Leone. One of my greatest wishes is to be able to give a chance to who was born without it, to see children become adults without feeling the weight of someone’s gaze, of judgment. My greatest joy is to know that when my transit finishes, Leo will live in a facility designed for him.
TARGETS
The Foundation has civic, therapeutic, ludic and inclusive purposes by promoting initiatives aimed at social and health assistance for minors and adolescents affected by autism and other neural developmental disorders, to improve and develop adequate treatment. The Foundation’s key ambition is to create a therapeutic and play structure that daily assists users through different traditional, play and sports therapies, and workshops (art, cooking and gardening…) in order to develop structured days for the users and to give their families time of leisure as well. It refers to a "special user" focusing on education, autonomy and social integration, through therapies and assisted educations, interacting with animals, agricultural and sensory activities, integrating the aba-vb principles, the ones of cognitive and communication enhancement, and social skills. The foundation will also welcome in specific moments such as workshops and catering, all children with the desire to share activities and moments of happiness with differently abled ones.
This is how the project a(i)utiamo was born.
