The 50 Best Champions of Change 2024 run a supportive sisterhood training the city’s newest chefs. The initiative has already helped 43 women from 19 different countries – and there are no plans to slow down
‘I felt really confident doing my first job interview in Italian’, ‘I got my driver’s licence’, ‘I got a job’, ‘I have a permanent contract at work’, are just some of the WhatsApp messages Caroline Caporossi and Jessica Rosval receive on a regular basis from graduates of their paid culinary training programme, Roots. “Our organisation is beautiful because we’re always getting good news from our graduates and we’re always celebrating each other’s success stories,” Caporossi says.
Friends Caporossi and Rosval met in 2017 at Osteria Francescana on Caporossi’s first day on an internship at Food for Soul, a non-profit founded by Chef Massimo Bottura and Lara Gilmore to shine light on the invisible potential of people, places and food.
Rosval was born in Canada and went to culinary school in Montréal, before moving to Italy in 2013. After meeting Massimo Bottura at the end of her birthday meal at Osteria Francescana, she was working in the kitchen just two months later. Starting on appetisers, she took over running external events and has been the head chef at Bottura’s Casa Maria Luigia boutique hotel since 2019.
“I was really nervous and I didn’t know anyone,” recalls Caporossi of their first encounter. “I walked through the kitchen and Jessica was super confident and said, ‘Hi, I’m Jessica. Anything you need, let me know.’ It was a warm welcome and we became friends instantly.”
Jessica Rosval and Caroline Caporossi at The World's 50 Best Restaurants 2024 awards
Fast forward to 2020, and the pair founded The Association for the Integration of Women. For young, migrant women living in Modena – and throughout the European Union – access to work opportunities is limited. The mission statement of the non-profit is ‘to provide resources for women to spread roots and flourish’.
In 2022, they founded Roots, a social enterprise restaurant which has a professional, paid training programme for migrant women passionate about food and becoming cooks. The students stay for four months and develop their experience, skills, self-confidence – and have the support of the team to help connect them to jobs after graduating.
At The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2024 awards in Las Vegas, Caporossi and Rosval became Champions of Change. “Winning the Champions of Change award for Roots is extraordinary,” Rosval says. “It's an opportunity to really talk about what we're doing. It's an opportunity to share ideas. It's a platform, a space where we can say this is an incredible, self-sustainable model that helps our community, that helps our industry in a big way. And it's something that could be reproduced around the world. It's something that we hope and dream becomes this contagious idea that people open in their own cities. There are people all over the world who have enormous potential and having that unlocked, maybe with a hand from an organisation like Roots, is life changing.”
Trainees learn Italian as part of their four-month programme at Roots
Planting the seed
But how did it all begin? Caporossi grew up in the US – her great grandparents were Italian immigrants. After studying Spanish at university, she found her passion working at a non-profit which supported Latin American women who had survived crime or domestic violence. In 2016, she moved to Modena with her partner, started out teaching English at a daycare school, and eventually found her way back to her passion with an internship at Food for Soul.
By this time, Caporossi had started to integrate, learn Italian and make friends and connections in the city. On her walk to work, she started to see the same young woman asking for money on the street. After passing a few times, the pair started smiling at each other. This progressed to a wave, and eventually, Caporossi stopped to talk. “I found out we were both 25. We’re both English speakers. We both arrived in Modena in Italy the same year. But while I was able to find my first internship and job opportunity and integrate, she hadn’t.”
The food at Roots showcases the beauty of the diversity that exists in the Modena community
Her name is Ella, she’s from Nigeria, and she shared her story with Caporossi. “What brought her to Italy was that she wanted to become the first woman in her family to work. I found myself in front of this woman who had all the same ambition and drive to establish herself that I did. But she was even more brave because she had to face a lot more to get here and moved a lot further with many more unknowns in front of her,” she explains.
Caporossi connected Ella to her first job in a kitchen, and supported her with her paycheques, work contracts and cultural mediation – although these weren’t necessarily things Caporossi was an expert in herself. The seed was planted and the idea began to grow. “Around that time I came to Jessica – I felt there was this huge opportunity here because we had this talent pool of young, bright women with human capital and diversity and a lot they can give to Modena. And on the other side, [there were] a lot of job openings.”
The pair got together to work out how to develop a programme that would act as a trampoline to help these women achieve their potential.
Since launching in 2022, 95 per cent of the women who have completed the programme are working in hospitality
Migrant women – in Italy and elsewhere – face double or even triple disadvantage, according to Caporossi and Rosval: they’re women, they’re migrants and they’re ethnic minorities. However, despite such difficulties, these women are full of ambition, full of motivation and full of talent.
“We provide the context, but they do everything and bring all the value. That will help them to feel more integrated and culturally relevant, but also, women invest in the health of their communities economically too,” says Caporossi.
Children of women who work are more likely to work themselves and they’re also more likely to make investments in the health of their families, societies and schools, both locally and in their countries of origin. “Programmes that help women to employment have a large-scale impact.”
The first shoots appear
Roots offers something fresh in a city shaped by its food heritage and tradition. The menu at the restaurant has a dual purpose. “It not only incorporates all the technical skills we want to teach our chefs in their four months with us – because practice makes perfect – but the dishes reflect the origins of the trainees. We want to invite Modena into our restaurant so people can discover the beauty of the diversity that exists in our community,” Rosval says.
During the first week on the Roots programme, everyone goes to the market, then gets in the kitchen to cook a dish that reflects who they are. “It’s not necessarily food from where they come from, but perhaps a dish that tells a story about their life or their travels or something they used to cook one way in their country of origin, but that they’ve modified when they’ve come to Italy with new ingredients,” adds Rosval.
In the first week, trainees cook lunch together and get to know each other
The day is called ‘chi sono?’ (‘who am I?’) and allows the group to put its collective guard down and talk. “We take ideas and points of inspiration from that day when creating the menu at Roots. We want to make sure it represents every single person working in our kitchens.”
A long way to grow, but the roots are spreading
The Roots programme is relatively new, having only launched in 2022, but it has already had a real impact on lives. “We have provided access to 43 women from 19 different countries. Out of those graduates, 95 per cent are currently employed in the kitchen world. They’re not huge numbers and we’re a small organisation,” Caporossi says. This is just the tip of the iceberg, as the programme affects many more people that the women have in their lives, be it partners, family members or children.
Roots may be young and have a long way to grow, but it’s already firmly planted in the community of Modena. Rosval says: “It feels amazing to be part of a project like this and to contribute to this path of growth for these women in our community. It’s an incredibly inspiring and motivating feeling… but we’ve received so much from them as well, seeing the strength and the courage that they show up with every single day is something that truly inspires me.” 
Rosval hopes the success of Roots will inspire others to launch similar initiatives in other cities
Many Roots graduates become volunteers, including within the organisation, so “it creates a really beautiful cycle of empowerment and positive change in the Modena community,” and there are regularly past graduates mentoring current graduates.
Caporossi sums up the work of Roots perfectly: “It makes me feel really hopeful about the future. There's a lot to be concerned about in the world and the women we work with have personally lived a lot of the terrible things we see on the news and some really difficult situations. But despite all of that, they show up to our kitchen, bringing the best of themselves every day, hopeful about the future. I'm fully confident that the future is going to be bright in Modena because I've seen what they're capable of. It's just a pleasure to share that community with these individuals.”
The list of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2024, sponsored by S.Pellegrino & Acqua Panna was announced at a live awards ceremony on Wednesday 5 June from Las Vegas. To stay up to date with the latest news, follow us on Instagram, Facebook, X and YouTube, and sign up to our newsletter.
