Happy Bread Angels
by Yin Xisheng
Amity's Home of Blessings has opened a bakery as a vocational training institution for developmentally disabled people. Giving them an opportunity to work in a real-life workplace has improved the lives of people with Down syndrome - and those of their customers.
30-year-old Zhou Jian from Nanjing has just mastered the first vocational skill in his life - baking bread. What may seem rather commonplace to most people is far from normal in his case. Zhou Jian was born with Down syndrome and was, until recently, completely dependent on his family. People with Down syndrome often have lower than average cognitive ability; a few are severely mentally disabled. Zhou Jian's parents provided care for him 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all year round. They will never forget the moment they tasted the first piece of bread baked by their son: it marked a huge step in his life. In the near future, he may even be able to support himself with his new skill, which he learned with the help of the Amity Home of Blessings.
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Young employees of the Home of Blessings bakery |
The main reason for Amity to open a bakery was that there is an urgent need for vocational training for developmentally disabled people in China. A great number of them have spent basically all their lives at home, which not only makes them less and less able to develop skills and interact with other people but also adds to the economic and emotional burden on their families. Training developmentally disabled people to take care of themselves, so they don't depend on family members for everything, is of very high importance in the care for these people. However, given the great number of developmentally disabled people who need to be trained in such a way and the few resources available, this is an all but impossible task. Arguably a more realistic approach is to provide vocational training to those who are able to do some light work.
Although this idea is by no means new, it has proved quite hard to put it into practice. There are few success stories. This is because developmentally disabled people are often not very motivated, or not very willing to engage with other people. Many of them are generally able to work but may find it hard to be at the workplace on time and to comply with basic work regulations. This poses a great challenge to supervisors. Pre-employment training is therefore becoming more and more important - and this is where the Home of Blessings bakery comes in.
How it started
Preparations for the bakery started in March 2007. In September, Chu Chaoyu, the director of the Home of Blessings, started looking for a professional baker. The requirements were quite high: applicants must have excellent professional skills and plenty of experience; they must be happy to work with developmentally disabled people and preferably already have relevant experience. Mr. Li, who was finally hired by Amity after a one-week trial period, previously worked for a supermarket bakery and has worked with deaf people.
In November the bakery started its first test runs. The Home of Blessings clients were very eager to start working, carefully implementing the strict hygiene rules they had practiced and washing their hands in seven steps, as Mr. Li had taught them. This kind of training also unwittingly improves people's ability to look after themselves. According to Director Chu, "The work environment at our bakery is in many ways similar to real-life workplaces, and it gives people who work there the opportunity to develop useful skills. In the future, we will be able to recommend our clients to other employers, so hopefully even with our limited resources we can make quite a big difference in terms of integrating developmentally disabled people into working life."
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Baking sweet buns at the Home of Blessings bakery |
Today more than 20 different kinds of bread, cake and cookies are produced at the Amity bakery. Most of the produce is sold to students at the nearby colleges and to the general population. Director Chu says that the bakery project has a good effect on perceptions of developmentally disabled people: they used to have a very low social status and were sometimes even regarded as disgusting. The bread from the bakery, however, shows that they can contribute something useful and valuable.
Inviting participation
The Home of Blessings bakery has also organized "Happy Bread Angel" recruitment events, inviting people to take part in bread making on weekends. On these occasions, those who learn vocational skills at the bakery turn into teachers and show others how to do each of the steps from preparing the dough to wrapping the baked bread or cake. Interacting with the developmentally disabled, participants in these events find that the developmentally disabled are just as good as anybody and there is no reason to look down upon them. The "Happy Bread Angel" courses have a great effect on the developmentally disabled people's self-confidence and on their integration into "normal" society. A lot of people have been interested in taking part in these events; due to the limited space at the bakery, however, only relatively few have been able to attend. Generally, the Home of Blessings has too little space and is spread out over different locations in the city of Nanjing, which is stunting its growth and its ability to make an even bigger contribution to society.
In the meantime, Zhou Jian has even learned to cook. He is determined to go on improving his skills. Recently, he bought a scarf for his mother with the money he has earned at the Home of Blessings bakery.
