Principles

Situation Analysis

Objectives

1. To live and work together is for us Salesians a fundamental requirement and a sure way of fulfilling our vocation. This is why we come together in communities (Const.49)

+1. Our communities are multicultural where confreres are generally open, talented available and exemplar in their fidelity to religious life. There is a healthy community life where there is respect, acceptance, and true friendship, time to share, pray and relax together. Such environment fosters the fidelity to our religious consecration. The weekly day of the Community, the Plan for Community Life and Personal Plan f Salesian Life are important tools to bring this about.

-2. A good number of confreres of the Delegation have gone back to their Provinces of origin.

1. Continue to promote initiatives to help deepen our fraternal life in communities.

2. Help new arrivals get to know well our Melanesian cultures.

2. To carry out its role of animation, the Salesian community needs a quantitative and qualitative consistency which helps to make its activity visible and significant. (GC 24, 173)

+1. At the Delegation level, fraternal life is fostered through an effort to animate the confreres, regular meetings, prayer circle, and communication via radio, e-mail and phone.

-2. The quantitative inconsistency of our communities does not foster fraternal life, limits opportunities for on-going formation, as well as affected the effectiveness of our work of evangelization in schools and parishes.

3. Give priority to the animation of the local community and the Delegation.

4. Ensure the quantitative consistency of every community.

5. Foster fraternal life at the Delegation level.

3. Our common vocation requires the responsible and effective participation of all the members… not only in terms of implementation but also of planning, organizing and evaluating, according to their respective roles and competence… in the choice of those responsible for government at the different levels, and in the working out of their more important decisions (Cons. 123).

+1. There is a strong desire among confreres to participate and be involved in decision making which could be addressed through collaboration, consultation and in the decision-making process.

-2. Some confreres feel that they could be more involved in the decision making-process, to increase opportunities for participative leadership.

6. Ensure that there is participation in decision making process through collaboration and consensus seeking.

4. In Salesian tradition, obedience and authority are practiced in a family spirit of love which inspires relationships of mutual esteem and trust…The service of authority and the willingness to obey are the principles of cohesion in the congregation, and guarantee its permanence (Const. 65)

+1. Confreres willingly take different responsibilities within the community apostolate, with the support of the Superior. There is an effort to practice dialogue.

7. Strengthen the family spirit as the foundation of Salesian obedience.

5. A transparent administration through a careful recording of expenses, a fraternal and trusting reference to the one responsible for administration, and request for authorizations foreseen by the Constitutions and Regulations, all form part of the spirit of poverty (Don Juan Vecchi, Sent to Bring News to the Poor, in AGC 367)

+1. In general our houses are simple and functional and confreres live a simple and frugal life.

-2. The confreres’ simple and frugal life is still better or above the lifestyle of the majority of our people in PNG and SI.

8. Ensure accountability and transparency at the Delegation and the local level.

6. Our tradition has always considered chastity a resplendent virtue, bearing a special message for the education of youth. Through we bear witness to the predilection of Christ for the young; it allows us to love them in an open and uncomplicated way, so that they “know they are loved”, and it enables us to educate them to love and to purity (Const. 81).

+1. In general, Salesians have a healthy relationship with the young with parameters and limits. There is a serene and prudent relationship with the opposite sex.

-2. Some Melanesian cultural practices as well as the prevalent promiscuity are a challenge to the practice of the virtue of chastity especially to the youth and also to the Salesians.

9. Help every confrere to live the vow and virtue of chastity.

Principles

Situation Analysis

Objectives

1. The Salesian School fosters the total development of the young person through the assimilation and critical re-elaboration of culture and education to the faith in view of the Christian transformation of society… A periodic examination should be made to ensure that the contents of the curriculum and pedagogical and training methods are still valid as regards their relationship with the social milieu, the world of work and the pastoral indications of the Church (Const. 13).

+1. There has been a reform in the Education system and our schools are adapting to it.

+2. There has been a welcome and significant contribution of local teachers in our settings. However there is a need for Christian coherence.

+-3. Education department needs qualified personnel in our schools

- 4. Our schools seem to run independently of each other, that some confreres feel the need of consolidating some common school practices.

1. Work for the consolidation of our schools and ensure that our schools maintain the Salesian identity.

2. Continue the formation of DBTI (tertiary) graduates at the respective settings (attitudes, alcoholism, family values, etc.)

3. Launch a serious study regarding our Delegation’s long-term plan for DBTI.

4. Improve the confreres’ qualification.

Principles

Situational Analysis

Objectives

1. Like Don Bosco, we are called to be educators to the faith at every opportunity. The education and evangelization of many young people, especially among the very poor, means that we have to go to them where they are to be found, and provide adequate forms of service in the context of their own life style (Const. 41)

+1. The SEPP ensures that the evangelization and catechesis take place in our schools and parishes.

1. Give due importance to Religious Education / Religious Instructions in our settings.

2. With Don Bosco we reaffirm our presence for the young who are “poor, abandoned and in danger”, those who have greater need of love and evangelization, and we work especially in areas of greatest poverty (Const. 26).

+1. These past 25 years in PNG and 10 years in SI, Salesians have tried to respond to the needs of marginalized youth through schools for non selected students, short term courses and the oratories. Most of our institutions give preference to those who are pushed out from the education system in both countries.

-2. Some confreres feel that we are not responding to the present and urgent needs of the young in the country like street children, rascalism, HIV/AIDS victims, drug abuse.

2. Make a systematic and scientific study on youth at risk in view of a relevant pastoral intervention.

3. Open new presences in favour of poor and abandoned youth and parish pastoral work.

Principles

Situational Analysis

Objectives

1. We must commit ourselves decisively to vocational pastoral work, which includes approach, contact and proposal. To recognize and welcome God’s gift is the first attitude to be adopted in all work of this kind (Don Juan Vecchi, Beatification of Bro. Artemide Zatti: A Sensational Precedent, in AGC 376).

+1. There is an effort among confreres to promote vocations by providing an environment favourable to the birth and growth of vocations through approach, contact, vocational proposal, youth groups, presence among the young and witness of community life.

+2. We have now national confreres.

-3. The non qualitative presence of Salesians among the young, lack of follow up of possible vocations as well as lack of contact with their families hinder an effective vocation promotion with special focus on the Salesian Brother.

1. Strengthen the youth groups in our presences.

2. Actively promote local vocations to the priesthood and brotherhood.

Principles

Situation Analysis

Objectives

1. Don Bosco inspired the start of a vast movement of persons who in different ways work for the salvation of the young…Within this family, by the will of the Founder, we have particular responsibilities: to preserve unity of spirit and to foster dialogue and fraternal collaboration for our mutual enrichment and greater apostolic effectiveness (Const. 5).

+1. Although our Delegation is relatively young, there are efforts to promote the growth of the various groups of the Salesian Family especially the Past Pupils, Archon, and the Cooperators.

+2. There has been a consistent effort to share the Salesian spirit with our lay collaborators by investing in their Salesian formation and creating structures that foster lay collaborators.

-3. Not all confreres have a clear idea of the identity of the different groups of the Salesian Family, thus they are not prepared neither to promote nor to animate and harness the active and sustained cooperation of the members of the Salesian Family and of the EPC.

1. Form Salesians as animators of the different groups of the Salesian Family.

2. Work for the continuous growth and development of the Salesian Family in the local and delegation level.