S TRENNA 2008

by Pascual Chávez Villanueva

EDUCATING WITH

THE HEART OF DB

The EDUCATIVE PROJECT

“The Salesian educative Project is the element of the inculturation of the charism.”¹ “[It] directs and guides an educative process in which multiple interventions and resources interact in the service of the gradual and integral development of the young person.”²

ASaAA t forty years of age, Don Bosco became aware that God was calling him to a mission among the young, and that at the Oratory he would fulfil his life’s purpose. In this way the Oratory entered into the plan of salvation as a response to a divine call, not as a work founded on one person’s good will. But he had to overcome many obstacles: the difficulty of gathering the boys together, lack of economic resources and of a suitable place, the need for a new pastoral strategy and a previously untried training programme as a response to the immigration that saw the population of Turin increase in ten years by 17%.³ He didn’t consider economic development an evil in itself; he didn’t see the education of the masses – a source of apprehension in the more conservative circles –as an evil to be eradicated, but as a resource to be made good use of in the formation of the young. Recognising that “organised” church structures were not coping in the face of social inequalities and cultural changes, he tried new ways, he opened up new avenues on behalf of the young people uprooted from their natural environment and he sought new and more courageous educational horizons,⁴ bringing to life ideas and works. So he drew up the “Regulations for the Oratory” to put into practice his own educational method: it is the foundation stone of the “Salesian Educational Pastoral Project,” the SEPP.

THE PRACTICAL WAY

The SEPP is the practical way for our own day of carrying out the Salesian mission, the expression of the planning mentality that needs to guide the implementation of the mission in the various different works, directing the process to incarnate the mission in a specific context, the precise identification of the particular sort of the person one wants to form. At the centre is the individual young person, seen from all points of view (his physical nature, his intelligence, emotions, will) and his relationships (with himself, with others and with God). The SEPP addresses its attention primarily to young people who are the poorest and in difficulty. Before being a document it is a communal mental process of involvement, clarification and identification, aimed at generating practical synergy based on objective educational criteria and shared courses of action, in this way avoiding a dissipation of energies. The SEPP is the “identity card” of every Salesian work. Society is becoming ever more complex and global; a planetary culture is emerging on a huge scale and pluralistic in character, in which the means of social communication rapidly spread values, languages, criteria, models and styles of life that are often contradictory and ambiguous. Frequently young people find themselves on their own as they look for meaning in life; fearful in the face of an uncertain future, incapable of making clear and long-term decisions. The family, the school and the Church seem to lose the privileged role they used to have as determining factors. In this situation the SEPP should appear as having something worth-while to offer, as it accepts young people where they are, encourages in them a process that leads to full human maturity and enables them to take a leading role in living their own lives.

THE OBJECTIVE OF SEPP

Young peoples’ expectations vary. Many are a long way from the faith almost without being aware of it. For others religion has a low priority and they practise only occasionally. In all of them however, it is possible to perceive a need for truth, freedom, human development, and the desire even if only implicit for a deeper knowledge of the mystery of God. Therefore from the point of view of an education that evangelises and an evangelisation that educates, the aim of the SEPP is that every young person should come to a synthesis of faith and culture in his own life: arrive at a mature faith that constitutes a person’s core values and his view of the world, one that is open to all the challenges posed by cultural, committed to putting into practice his own options and values; that stimulates and further encourages the processes of human development according to the gospel model. Indeed the SEPP is the expression for these times of Don Bosco’s Educational System, the practical way for our own day through which Don Bosco wants go show his passion for the salvation of youth and realise his dream of making every young person “an upright citizen and a good Christian”. ■