“Preventive System and human rights:

the educational challenge for the Third Millennium”

Rome, Chapter Hall of the Senate of the Republic

Fr Pascual Chávez Villanueva

Rector Major of the Salesians of Don Bosco

Mr President, Senators, Honourable Members, Ladies, Gentlemen, I am happy to be here this evening and to be able to extend Christmas greetings and best wishes to this prestigious place, in the name of the entire Salesian Family. A special thanks to the President of the Commission Senator Pietro Marcenaro, who made this initiative possible.

The days of preparation for the holy event of Christmas are particularly significant ones in the Christian tradition and for very many peoples around the world.

For us Salesians, this year, and the days of Christmas preparation, are doubly significant because we are also celebrating the birth of our Congregation.

Don Bosco founded the Salesian Congregation ¹ on 18 December 1859, not in order to give rise to a new work that he had already set in motion, but to maintain and develop it, a work of recovery and promotion, today we would say of integral human development, which came about from amongst the boys whom Don Bosco had dedicated himself to, and with them.

Halfway through the 18th Century Don Bosco was working not only ‘for’, but ‘with’ the poorest and most neglected youth in a Turin that was undergoing a tumultuous development, and which was unfortunately afflicted with huge pockets of poverty and violence. On the northern outskirts of the city a ‘black belt’ was developing made up of crowded hovels filled with poor immigrants. Increasing waves of very poor farming families and youngsters on their own were leaving the countryside and coming to seek work and their fortune in the city, crowding into shacks which had sprung up along the banks of the Dora, where all the cities untreated sewerage poured into. Those young people, many of them still just boys, or even children, were taken on and exploited in the building works in the southern part, in manufacturing industries, spinning mills, tanneries, furnaces, factories. Subjected to inhumane working hours, many died prematurely at 18-19 years of age; many others, maybe thrown out for “poor performance”, ended up on the street. In the exhausting and often desperate search for survival, these boys often came together in gangs, lived off stealing from the merchants' stalls, like little pickpockets, always at loggerheads with the police who chased after them, and were thrown into prison as soon as they were caught.

The disconcerting nature of circumstances of this kind strikes the eyes and minds of any of us who visit poor countries, but also those of us who have occasion to come into contact with pockets of poverty and violence in our own society.

It is the world-wide dimension that these phenomena assume which has urged us to strongly draw the attention of all educators to them, as indicated in my Strenna to the Salesian Family for 2008. By means of a questionnaire on educational practices regarding human rights already put into practice in 97 Salesian Provinces and then through participative activities over a two year period in 130 countries, the Congress organised in Rome in January 2009 was prepared, and it ratified in a solemn way the essential link in education of the young between the “Preventive System and Human Rights”. Now with the Acts, and with the multimedia material to be presented this evening, I am presenting the involvement and commitment of the Salesian Congregation in “educating with the heart of Don Bosco, for the integral development of the lives of the young, especially the poorest and most disadvantaged, by promoting their rights”.

The Oratory of a very poor Don Bosco began in 1843 in a shed, and gave rise to evening classes, workshops, a home for children and working boys. On 18 December 1859, 184 youngsters were boarding with Don Bosco (the following year there would be 355), and they were the soul of the festive oratory which numbered up to a thousand boys on Sundays.

The Salesian Congregation on 18 December 1859 in Valdocco came into being amongst these boys, and more precisely 16 of them, between 15 and 21 years of age, who had themselves experienced the work of recovery and promotion by Don Bosco and took on the role of principal protagonists.

The charism of Don Bosco, a holy educator and an educator Saint, his love for poor and neglected young people anticipated, in many of its aspects, theories of modern pedagogical choices; in particular, the outlook which we define today based on the human rights of the child.

In a context where the child, the needy youngster - because poor, illiterate, neglected, a migrant (the 18 December also happens to be World Day for Rights of Migrants) - is seen as deviant, a threat to society, with consequent repressive policies by institutions, Don Bosco highlights an educational view and approach and trusts young people, believes in their capabilities as a person, their own development and that of the community in which they live, and he invented and put into practice a new educational system: the ‘Preventive System’.

For Don Bosco the marginalised young person is not a passive beneficiary, a simple recipient of welfare, someone to offer things and services to.

Don Bosco proposes a new view of the marginalised young person, the educational relationship between educator and one being educated, one that anticipates a view of the child as the subject of rights, which the New York Convention ratified for the first time 20 years ago on 20 November 1989, in an article of international law which is binding today for 193 States.

Don Bosco's Preventive System has great relevance today and wide social projection: it aims to cooperate with many agencies in the transformation of society, working for a change of criteria and life perspectives, for the promotion of a culture of the other, a constant attitude of commitment to justice and the dignity of the human person.

We have close up experience of having built a financial and economic system based on false values.

We have this same close up experience of damage to the environment and the impact this has on climate, peoples, development.

This is the moment for proposing authenticity, solidarity, simplicity for a new kind of active and responsible citizenship of the world, able to undo the narrow concept of a national or statistical citizenship in the name of a planetary citizenship, in order to remove the deeper causes of injustice, poverty, exclusion. Our work with the poor and the needy cannot be a “palliative” work meant to relive suffering, but has to be a work which transforms society.

Today the Salesians of Don Bosco and the 27 member groups of the Salesian Family are at work daily in schools, centres for technical formation, oratories, centres where large numbers of young people gather, taking in and re-integrating street children, child soldiers, young people in alternative settings to prison, in 130 countries around the world, on behalf of some 15 million boys and girls.

The UN Special Reporter on the right to education, here in Rome at our Congress on the “Preventive System and Human Rights”, told us that the Salesians today are probably the most representative educational agency in the world. We recognise this with humility but also with great awareness of our responsibility.

As always, as an integral part of our charism, the Salesians of Don Bosco are very sensitive to the topic of violation of human rights, especially where it concerns the young. The basis of human rights for us is the ontological fact of the dignity of every person, intrinsic to human nature; human rights for us belong to God's plan for every man and woman, “without distinction of race, colour, gender, language, religion, political opinion or any other kind, national or social origin, wealth, birth or other circumstance”².

Already in April 2002 as Rector Major I launched for all educators in the Salesian Family this appeal, which I repeated at the Campidoglio for everyone, laity and divil society, believer and non-believer: “Before it is too late, let us save the young who are the hope of the world”.

As a Salesian Family, the challenge for us however is focused on prevention rather than denunciation, on preventive education, on breaking the vicious cycle which perpetuates continuous violations of human rights and the dignity of the person, on fostering a widespread culture, one which gets out of the lawyers' and legal philosophers' rooms to become the patrimony of humanity.

The challenge for us is to educate young people to individual and social commitment and involvement in human development, becoming active in a new responsible world citizenship.

On the topic of human rights, no country or society is immune. Questions about human rights are not just in reference to developing countries. Also countries which define themselves as “advanced democracies” adopt human rights policies which have a “double-standard”.

60 years from the Universal Declaration on Human rights, with the new tools that we have at our disposal (I am thinking of new technologies, but also the opportunities for our young people to give a year of civil service abroad), education to human rights is for us today more than ever before, an urgent commitment and one of the highest priorities as a form of ongoing education, a privileged way of prevention, human development, to build a more equitable, just and sound world.

Only education can promote a new world. Education is not simply instruction. Education is the art of forming the human person, developing al his or her dimensions, so each man, woman and child can live a free and dignified existence in peace; at the same time education is the most radical way of removing the causes which block such promotion.

Faced with the “educational emergency” which marks our current circumstances with great polarity and ambivalence, faced with an education that is often considered from the “logic of the marketplace”, faced with an education too often a slave to the maintenance of the status quo which continues to privatise wealth and socialise every kind of poverty, faced with the rupture between education and society, the divide between school and citizenship, as a Salesian Congregation we feel the need to unite ourselves with the young, with teachers, educators, families and associations, institutions in civil society, to give value to the quality of our educational proposals, our ability to help young people to mature, and not only that but, universal values of respect and the promotion of the dignity of every human being, personal and social responsibility for justice and solidarity, active citizenship.

The right to education is not, as is often maintained, purely a question of access to instruction, but also one f the quality of education, as a right in itself but also an empowering right for the promotion and enjoyment of all other human rights.

Of education understood in qualitative terms, education not only ‘to’, but also ‘for’ human rights, is an essential component.

Human rights are not taught from on high, are not imposed, but education to human rights is an ongoing education. In the new globalised context, education to and for human rights offers new frontiers and opportunities for dialogue and networking with so many individuals and social agencies.

In a context of militant and exacerbated secularism, which tends to eliminate values which instead belong also to the secular world, human rights are a tool capable of going beyond narrow national borders in order to impose common limits and objectives, create alliances and strategies and mobilise resources.

The topics, best practices, tools, conclusions and guidelines proposed by the Salesian Family at the end of a long participative course of preparation, are particularly significant today at the end of 2009, a year dedicated by the General Assembly of the United nations to learning about human rights, and on the occasion of the 10th December, World Human rights Day, which saw the beginning of the second phase of the UN World Programme for education to human rights, focused on forming educators, one of the key issues for we Salesians too.

The launching of the Acts of the International Congress a multimedia work in 7 languages which will go to 130 countries around the world is one of the contributions of the Salesian Family for education to and for human rights, for the promotion and protection of the rights of the young as essential instruments in sustainable development.

Promoting human rights as a way of promoting a culture of peace and human development, as a commitment to justice and the dignity of each person are a Salesian challenge, but also one for secular and active citizenship in the Third Millennium.

Everyone of us is called to join together in this challenge in a more incisive and effective alliance.

Thank you.

Rome, 14 December 2009

Fr Pascual Chávez Villanueva

Rector Major