NAIROBI: July 19, 2014 -- The recent item on 'Official but Informal'
brought in considerable response! It spoke positively of the
Rector Major's 'informal' stamp on communication. Well, here
is another perspective on 'informal' where it becomes a dirty
word. But it is at the heart of Salesian activity on new
frontiers, and while the substance of this material comes from
a meeting that has just concluded in Nairobi, the Asia-Pacific
area which EAO covers, with 45% of the world's youth (about
700 million between the ages of 15-24), is it time for a
Salesian meeting on this issue in our Region?
If there is a spectre haunting the world (other than MH17,
ISIS, Boko Haram, war in the Middle East ...) it is the
so-called informal economy, according to the World
Economic Forum - but the WEF considers this in purely
market terms. What does a Salesian think when he sees a brief
news flash (it was yesterday, I think) that in Bolivia,
the self-employed (=informal) working age has been lowered
to 10?! Quite apart from the age, we already know that
Bolivia has 64% of its total population involved in informal
employment and that means no social protection, no health
insurance, exploitation, no recognition at any real level,
poor educational attainment, increase in urban crime, ethnic
violence, political unrest ...
Salesian Africa-Madagascar is doing something about it (which
does not mean, of course, that other regions are not!). A
meeting of 45 Salesians and lay mission partners, plus
representatives from the Caribbean (Dominican republic and
Haiti), representatives too from Volunteers for Development
(VIS - Italy), Don Bosco Mondo (Germany) and Via Don Bosco
(Belgium) met at the Don Bosco Youth Educational Services
Centre outside Nairobi to see how Salesian African and
Madagascan Planning and Development Offices (PDO) and Salesian
generally are tackling the issue through Vocational Education
and Training (VET) strategies. Key amongst this is the
planning for what will become a new Salesian acronym and one
that could not have been dreamed of just a handful of years
ago: BTA or Bosco Tech Africa.
The meeting also attracted three members of the Salesian
General Council (Fr Americo Chaquisse, Regional for
Africa-Madagascar), Fr Fabio Attard (Councillor for Youth
Ministry) and Fr Guillerme Basañes, Councillor for the
Missions. The East Africa Provincial, Fr Rolandi was there. It
also attracted the United Nations, who sent a Mr Pascal
Annycke to address the meeting on the TVET (Add 'Technical' to
the earlier description for VET) response to the lack of
protection - he is a UN Protection Officer - for young people
in the informal sector.
Two things stand out here immediately. One is that BTA is
becoming a reality. The meeting agreed to create collaborative
structures and common thinking between the PDOs and BTA and
for the former to help with capacity building of staff for
BTA. The other is that African-Madagascan Salesian PDOs are
showing great capacity for common planning and have actually
divided themselves into regions: east and southern Africa as
one, west Africa, Haiti and the Caribbean, interestingly
enough as another region, and central Africa, Mozambique and
Angola as the third. They will be conducting training sessions
within those regions in August and September
This is really quite some development. Every Salesian
Region is different, with different configurations and
possibilities. EAO with, as indicated above, 45% of the
world's youth and a undefined but clearly high percentage in
the informal sector, already has TVET and many other
educational and protection activities in place. The
interesting aspect to the Africa-Madagascar surge in this
activity, though, is the common planning and developing
connection between PDOs and TVET. It could be
interesting to hear of common planning and thinking going on
in EAO. Given the wide readership of austraLasia, you would be
guaranteed an audience and an interested one at that.
