The Youth Pastoral wing is the hub of our Salesian Apostolate. This main stem of Provincial Commissions animates and gives direction to Salesian educative and apostolic activity in its different expressions. Through this department the delegate ensures that the priority of our commitment to youth and the influence of the preventive system are achieved in them. The team has a core group of six members headed by the Vice-Provincial. Each of the four dimensions viz., education and culture, evangelization and catechesis, groups and movements and vocational guidance is represented by a member.The Young at Risk commission is also represented by a member.

The functioning of the Youth Pastoral team

The Youth Pastoral team assists in the preparation of Provincial E.P.P., with the help of various commissions in the province at the beginning of the academic year and sends copies to all the communities. It monitors the implementation of the lines of action.

It assists in the preparation of the local EPP, making sure that all the four dimensions of youth Pastoral are taken care of.

Each member representing the dimension takes care to see, to the growth of that dimension in our local communities by visiting, conducting meetings, and through suggestions and interventions.

With the intentions of providing vocational and career guidance to our youth DHISHA, the Career guidance and job placement unit was founded. It has its head office in Hyderabad and a branch office in Guntur.

Besides these specific activities, the Youth Pastoral Team previews periodically, all the youth related apostolate and initiatives (as listed below) of the Province.

1. The Oratory and Youth Centres

An environment of broad acceptance, open to a wide range of young people, above all those most alienated. This is achieved through a diversity of educational and evangelizing activities characterized by their focus on the young and strong personal relationships between educator and youngster, capable of becoming a missionary presence in the world of the young and of civil society.

2. The school and Professional formation

Centres for formal education, inspired by Gospel values according to the spirit and pedagogical style of the Saleisans, in order to promote popular education attentive to the most needy, to their professional formation and to accompanying their gradual insertion into the world of work.

3. Boarding and hostel arrangements

A service for accepting young people without family or who are temporarily estranged from family. Here they find personal relationships, opportunity for commitment and responsibility for young people in daily life, and the life of the group with its various formative educative and Christian opportunities.

4. A presence to the Tertiary sector

Through institutes of higher education inspired by Christian values and with a Catholic and Salesian style; hostels and university residences, other services of pastoral animation at this level.

5. The parish.

Characterized by a special attention to young people, above all to the poorest of them, the popular environment where it is to be found, by the presence of a Salesian religious community at its animating heart, and by activity of evangelization and education to faith strictly integrated with the human development of the person and the group.

6. Social services and works for youth-at-risk

A family atmosphere of acceptance and education, animated by a community with ‘preventive’ criteria according to the educative style of Don Bosco. This is inspired by the Gospel and has the aim to evangelize, open to the transformation of realities which are socially exclusive and to the building of a culture of solidarity, in collaboration with other social institutions.

7. Social communication

Through education to an understanding and proper use and utilization of the media, the development of the communicative potential of persons through the new languages of music, theatre, art etc. Formation to a critical, aesthetic and moral sense, promotion of information and editorial centres in press, radio, television, internet etc. Finally, the service of the Salesian educational and pastoral project.

8. Other new forms of Salesian presence to the young

  • The Salesian Youth Movement: communion and connection between all youth groups and associations which acknowledge Salesian spirituality and pedagogy, and which take up an educative and evangelizing task and commit themselves to share and coordinate among themselves.
  • The Salesian Voluntariate: a voluntary activity committed to the human and Salesian development of the young, above all the poorest of them, and active among the common folk, according to the style of Don Bosco’s Preventive System and the values of Salesian Youth Spirituality. They carry out their activity in view of the transformation of society and the removal of causes of injustice, and they favour a community experience and the vocational development of the volunteer.
  • Services for vocational orientation: meetings and centres for vocational orientation, communities where this can occur, etc…
  • Specialized services for Christian formation: special education centres, houses of retreat and spirituality, centres for pastoral and Catechetical formation etc.

 

PROVINCIAL COMMISSIONS

YOUTH MINISTRY

Delegate                                                   P SANTIAGU Thomas         
Educational & Cultural Dimension    P PASALA Bhaskar                               
Education to Faith Dimension            P BOKKALA Rayappa                           
Social Experience Dimension              P BODDU Charan Kumar                   
Vocational Dimension                           P PARRY Rayulu (Sarath)