DON BOSCO Boys & Girls Embu

main resilient and handle success and failure with equal grace, grace from above. It is more than a matter of faith, as sincere efforts are required to harness our power, direct our efforts and purify our intentions. The directives of the GC 25 of the Salesians of Don Bosco, are a testament to be passionate, especially as we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the founding of the congregation. Let us enumerate some handy strategies on this adventure of living with passion. THE FOUNDING DOCUMENT

In the year of Our Lord eighteen hundred and fifty-nine, on the eighteenth of December, in this Oratory of St. Francis de Sales, at 9 in the evening, the following gathered in Father John Bosco’s room: [Don Bosco] himself, Father Vittorio Alasonatti, the Seminarians Deacon Angelo Savio, Sub deacon Michele Rua, Giovanni Cagliero, Gio. Battista Francesia, Francesco Provera, Carlo Ghivarello, Giuseppe Lazzero, Giovanni Bonetti, Giovanni Anfossi, Luigi Marcellino, Francesco Cerruti, Celestino Durando, Secondo Pettiva, Antonio Rovetto, Cesare Giuseppe Bongiovanni, and the young man Luigi Chiapale. All [present were] united in one and the same spirit with the sole purpose of preserving and promoting the spirit of true charity needed for the work of the oratories on behalf of neglected young people at risk. For in these disastrous times of ours such young people are liable to being corrupted and plunged into godlessness and irreligion to the detriment of the whole of society.



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A HUNDRED WAYS OF COMMUNICATING

A great creator of educational/evangelising situations, Don Bosco knew how to take advantage of the quality and the strength of the languages of communication in order to make an impact in an original and effective way on the young. He knew how to touch the heart-strings. He was not only an evangeliser/educator but a born communicator too. The clear objective of the style of communication invented by Don Bosco was that which one of my predecessors, Fr Egidio Viganò, described in lapidary form: educating by evangelising and evangelising by educating, the inseparable link in the Salesian mission. He succeeded in getting the best out of the youngsters by making them take the leading role in their own education, and the best out of the educators/ evangelisers by making them witnesses to the gospel and the animators of the wealth of youthful expression. In the Oratory a broad spectrum of forms of communication touched the lives of the many “poor and abandoned” boys who arrived in Turin from the valleys. The house, the school, catechism, mass, work, the band, the stage, outings, games, work-shops, the Good Nights, descriptions of dreams, sermons, a little word in the ear, slips of paper with personal messages, etc. all communicated a culture, a way of relating to God, to the world sand to others. All of this opened up life to hope, to trust to meaning, just when perhaps for some that had already been lost. The Oratory, in other words, represented a sound and well founded cultural alternative.