From 9th till 12th of October,12 European Salesian Youth organisations met again in the Savio house in Bollington. This time the topic was immigration and youth refugees, but also the future perspectives for Don Bosco Youth-Net were part of the agenda. For the first topic, we invited Fr. Chris Heaps SDB, to explain us some basic principles and thoughts on this topic. Starting point for his lecture was the manifesto on immigration that was made by the international Salesian community during a seminar in Barcelona in February 2003. Further on in the lecture he developed the thought of how refugees can become our friends, using reconciliation as the general concept. After this, we tried to look how the different youth organisations around the table could contribute to this theme and for this, the presence of Jongeren op Doortocht (Youngsters on Track), a Dutch organisation working with refugees, was certainly of a great value.

Next to all this, we welcomed SPYS (Salesian pastoral youth service) from Malta as our 10th full member, we discussed about the involvement of volunteers in our formal structure and the partners made a lot of concrete agreements on future projects and exchanges between themselves. We were also very happy to have Fr. Mario Baclig SDB among us, as a representative for the Youth Ministry Department in Rome, as well as a Polish delegation on the verge of becoming full members of our network.

As you can see, Don Bosco Youth-Net is growing and the number of activities, exchanges and projects between the different partners is increasing. This seminar has once again contributed to our general goal, which is to make a difference for youth!