The official quarterly newsletter of Don Bosco Youth-Net ivzw

NL 29 (Spring 2008)

Editorial - News from the network - News from the partners

Dossier - Little voices

A few weeks ago there was a special occasion for DBYN: we elected a new president and said goodbye to our old one. This might sounds quite normal to many of us, but as we still are a young organisation, we actually were saying goodbye to our first president. Since the creation of DBYN in 2001 Guido Stoop has been leading the network through its pioneering years, using all his experience and patience. Therefore we would like to thank Guido for all the efforts he has made for the network.

During his farewell speech Guido looked back at almost 8 years of his presidency, but also wanted to put forwards a few issues which he considers to be essential to the further development of Don Bosco Youth-Net ivzw. We think it is essential to share these issues with all of us:

• to keep our focus on Young people and there ideas, needs, questions, this in combination with the spirit – way of working - of Don Bosco.
• to put more more emphasis on “disadvantaged Young people”. Not only because Don Bosco would like this, but because we are as Don Bosco organisations, convinced that these Young people needs to receive as much possibilities and change as we have received.
• to improve communication between the partner organisations and the international secretariat. Bad communication can become a mayor problem for the continuity and future of the network if this way of working will continue. It is a matter of taking on responsibilities.

Guido ended with some good advice for the next president: “like in football – let the ball keep rolling. Do not play on defence or retreat, but play on the attack. We need to go on with the same power as we did till now.”

NEWS FROM THE NETWORK

Succesful G.E.B. meeting + Elections president & new AB

From 14 to 16 March, DBYN held its annual meeting of the General Executive Body at Benediktbeuern in Germany. During the meeting we started up the process of developing a new master plan for the period 2009 – 2011, we did an exchange market where the partner organisations could start-up new projects together, etc.

But most importantly, part of this meeting were the elections for our presidency and Administrative Body: Fr James Robert Gardner SDB, from the Province of Great Britain (GBR) is the new president, succeeding Br Guido Stoop of the North Belgium Province (BEN) who has led DBYN with great enthusiasm and motivation for the last six years.

The Jeugddienst Don Bosco of Belgium, Aktionszentrum of Germany, SPYS of Malta and WDM of Poland are the organisations, democratically elected by the 13 members of the Network, which make up the new council. During the meeting in Benediktbeuern SADBA, a Salesian organisation in the Czech Republic, was welcomed into the DBYN.

Training course in Malta

From 23 to 30 March there was a formation course at Savio College Dingli for young people involved with Don Bosco Youth Net (DBYN) from Germany, Austria, Belgium, Holland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Poland, United Kingdom and Malta.

The 37 young people who came to Dingli acquired new skills in the management of youth projects from their first conception to the final stages of evaluation. Through workshops, seminars, games, simulations and other methods they learned new approaches to youth work and ways of accessing the grants which the European Union makes available.

The days in Dingli were also useful for sharing experiences, discovering and understanding the peculiarities and the differences in the cultures from which they came and building up relationships and international contacts between the young participants.

The course, coordinated by the Salesian Pastoral Youth Service (SPYS) of Malta, was one of the initiatives planned and financed by ‘action 4’ of the Youth in Action Programme promoted by the European Union to provide formation and exchanges between youth workers and youth organisations.

You can find a video report of this meeting on www.youtube.com/dbyntv.

UPCOMING - Seminar on Disadvantaged Young People in Sevilla

“Few words and a lot of action” is a seminar which focuses on those Youth in Actions-projects which are most suitable for grassroots works & social inclusion: youth initiatives and group EVS. The seminar takes place 1-4 May 2008, near Sevilla (Spain) and is hosted by our Spanish partner Confed Don Bosco.

WORDS: The concept “disadvantaged young people” is culturally defined; it differs from region to regions, from country to country. The starting point for the seminar is a dialogue between the partner organisations, on their experiences in working with disadvantaged target groups. With this discussion we hope to contribute to the European year of Intercultural dialogue.

ACTION: During the programme the participants will not only be introduced to the actions; they will be able to start working on concrete projects as well. Furthermore we will look which opportunities there exist within YiA and the other Community programmes. At the end of the seminar the participants will be encouraged to set forward concrete goals to act as multipliers for this event.

This seminar will give the impulse to the partner organisations in setting up new YiA projects for disadvantaged youth, making sure that the “few words” of the seminar will result in “a lot of action”.

Call for EVS placement in DBYNs secretariat

The international secretariat of Don Bosco Youth-Net ivzw will apply for a EVS placement starting in December 2008. For this we are looking for candidates who are interested in spending a year in Belgium doing voluntary service for DBYN. A detailed description of the tasks of the voluntary service can be requested from the international secretariat.

Profile of the volunteer:

• 18 – 30 years old
• Male or female
• Active English knowledge
• Willing to learn Dutch
• Strong international interest
• Familiar with Youth work
• Openness to Christian values

The deadline for application is 1st of June 2008. Therefore we would like to receive your applications before the 12h of May 2008. You can apply by sending a letter of motivation and a curriculum vitae to donbosconet@skynet.be.

NEWS FROM THE PARTNERS

Federazione SCS/CNOS - Project Drug Stop

Drug Stop is a project to prevent the utilization of drugs and doping. It is born from the collaboration between Federazione SCS/CNOS and PGS and financed by the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy. It is started in November 2005 and six youth centres (in six different Italian cities) that had adhered to this project have worked on their territories to build a social network that can create a procient collaboration among institutions, schools, organizations and sports clubs to prevent the use of doping substances.

Training courses for animators and educators, training courses for teachers and students, training courses for parents, plus a direct involvement of adolescents in recreational activities and sports. In brief those are some of the interventions carried out. The activities are finished in July 2007. There are many positive changes produced in those months. The centres have created important collaborations on the territories. Now all the parties involved are more aware about the use of drugs and doping pharmaceuticals. Questionnaires have been used in order to estimate the extent in which Drug Stop has influenced on beneficiaries that are not only the adolescences but also parents, educators and trainers.

The outcomes of the projects are available also on the publication Because you worth… also without it, that contains also “routes of health education and prevention in the spheres of sport”. The book is composed by three parts:

The first part contains articles and expert’s contributions that offer reflection points to deepen the specific themes of the project: use of drugs and analysis of the motivations and the proposal of an intervention methodology. The second part is a report on the project Drug Stop on the activities carried out, beneficiaries, territories and all the organization involved.

The third part aims to present the organization involved, questionnaires given to the adolescents in secondary schools and High schools, final questionnaires for the operators. In this part are also presented the results on the life styles of the adolescents carried out during the realization of the project. Attached to the book there is also a Cd-Rom that contains all the produced materials and education supports, interviews and most significant experiences.

New EVS training centre ??? - Aktionszentrum Benediktbeuern (Germany)

The Aktionszentrum has submitted an application to be recognised as an EVS training centre. In order to do so, they’ve worked together with 2 other centres from the Bayern region.

New website for youth ministry – Salesian Youth Work office (UK)

Salesian Youth ministry UK has released its new website on the feast of Don Bosco. Surf to www.salesianyouthministry.com and check it our yourself.

Confed Don Bosco "UNITED FOR EUROPE" (Spain)

This is the title of a bilateral meeting between Spain and Italy which took place from 24 to 30 March. The meeting was organised by the salesian youth Center "Tucuman 7" from Alicante, belonging to the “Confederacion de centros juveniles Don Bosco from Spain”, and the italian Don Bosco Oratory "Piedimonti Matese”.

About 65 young people had the opportunity to meet each other and perform a variety of activities around the European subject, each day was on a specific theme, such as the future of Europe or young as European citizens in the welcoming Salesian house of El Campello in Alicante.

Through workshops, group dynamics, games on the beach, these young people will had the opportunity to dialogue about the role of youth in the development of an Europe more caring and fairer . But in addition to these activities there was time to visit Alicante city, where young Italians visited one of Spanish youth centres. There, the italians enjoyed a typical Spanish evening.

This great activity is developing within the European programme "Youth in Action”.

The new handbook “Voluntary Service in the Salesian Mission” – RMG (Rome)

On 31 January, the feast of Don Bosco, a new edition of the document “Voluntary Service in the Salesian Mission” produced by the Departments for Youth Ministry and the Missions were published.

The document, the result of the revision of the previous edition, takes account of the reflections and the suggestions that emerged during a number of seminars held during 2007 in the different Salesian Regions attended by those Salesians and lay people directly involved in youth ministry and voluntary service.

The document is available, for the present only in Italian, on the sdb.org site; shortly it will also be available in other languages. At the end of the 26th General Chapter the document will be printed and distributed in the various Provinces and Voluntary Service Centres.

Fr Francis Alencherry, Councillor for the Missions and Fr Antonio Domenech, Councillor for Youth Ministry, hope that the new edition of the Manual, published on the Solemnity of Don Bosco, may help Salesians to create an ever larger movement of people who are sharing in the same Salesian educational mission.

The 26th General Chapter of the Salesians

On the 3th of March the 26th General Chapter of the Salesian Congregation started. This meeting brings together Salesians from all over the world to reflect on their past work, and to put together a vision and mission for the next period of 6 years. Together with this there were elections for the General Council.

Don Pascual Chávez Villanueve was relected as Rector Major for the congregation. For a full overview of the new members of the General Council click this link. For more information on the General Chapter you can surf to the website of the event by clicking here.

DOSSIER

“To represent the voice of the Don Bosco Youth, via the members and to defend their interests at international level.” As such defined the founding members of Don Bosco Youth-Net ivzw one of its statutory aims. Through our first ad hoc efforts it became clear that if we want to make our voice heard, we need to structure this type work.

First we needed to create a common voice. We did this with our policy document “Few words and a lot of action ...”. This document is a charter which describes the common working style of Don Bosco Youth-Net ivzw (it can be requested from the international secretariat). It serves as a framework through giving our member organisations a common language. It was based on 3 key aspects of our network:

1. the heritage of Don Bosco (our background)
2. the partner organisations (our members)
3. the young people connected to the partner organisations (our target group).

Now we have a voice, we need to develop how we can make use of it. In other terms: What is our message and how will we get it across ? Therefore we are currently developing representation structure for the network. In order to build such a structure we need to focus on capacity building and empowerment on internal level, and on networking and advocacy on external level.

Representation work requires a specific set of competences of the representative. As it is DBYNs policy to ensure participation of young volunteers on all levels of the organisation, our representatives will be young volunteers as well. As not all young volunteers possess the needed competences, we need to train them. Through training we are able to empower our young volunteers for this type of work. This training needs to focus on knowledge (DBYN, international youth structure & policy, youth work themes), skills (communicaton, advocacy, networking) and attitudes (self-directed learning, teamwork).

There are many online resources which can be used for such a training:

• http://tools.iscvt.org: this is a wiki full of useful tools for Representation training.
• www.takingitglobal.org: has some toolkits as download available. The Guide to Action is the most general toolkit, which gives a good insight in how to become active.
• http://www.policyproject.com/: under the publications section you can download the document ‘Networking for Policy Change. An Advocacy Training Manual’ in English, French and Spanish. This document contains a lot of information and even full training sessions.
• http://www.cedpa.org/: under the publications section there is a free download of the manual ‘Advocacy: Building Skills for NGO leaders’ with a 3 day training programme. The programme is based on the previous manual (Networking for Policy Change).
• http://www.change-the-village.org/: the organisation MIJARC conducted a large-scale project on representation in 2006 – 2007. The final report of this project gives some good background information on the opinion making process.
• www.salto-youth.net/inclusion: the booklet ‘Making waves: creating more impact with youth Youth project’ gives practical information on using activities to promote your work.
• www.advocatesforyouth.org: the toolkit ‘Advocates for youth – Advocacy kit’ gives direct tips for different actions one can undertake for advocacy work. It can be found on the publications page.
• www.spelinfo.be: distributes ‘Majority’ , an informative game on democracy designed by Dimitry Masyn. DBYN developed an extension pack to this informative game called ‘Youth Representation’. This extension pack can be requested at the international secretariat of DBYN.

LITTLE VOICES

Only the rice we share together,

feeds.

Only the water we drink together,

quenches thirst,

Only the struggle we do together,

brings liberation

Only the clothes we share together,

make us pretty.

Only the words we find together,

make sense.

Only the path we walk together,

has a goal.

Only the goal we set together,

Can be reached.

Only the peace we want to make together,

will become worldwide