The center, directed by Ethiopian Salesian Yohannes Menghistu, offers prevention and rehabilitation programs for street children, or better yet, as the subtitle at the opening of the site's homepage declaims, "a place where street children get their opportunity to thrive in a new and better life."
At the center, the Salesians provide food, shelter, clothing, and all basic necessities to about 100 youths every day.
The first step for children entering the center's assistance program is the "Come and See" project. At their most vulnerable stage, these young people have a very low level of trust and indeed distrust others. Therefore, after the center's Economer, Fr. Angelo Regazzo, a Salesian missionary for decades in Ethiopia, meets them every day and picks them up in his minibus on the streets of Addis Ababa, the initial proposal is just to start an approach path in which the boys begin to get to know Salesians and volunteers and the various activities, while slowly a whole new world opens up for them that offers the possibility of a new and better life.
Furthermore, the "Come and See" journey moves along two paths: on the one hand, academic and life coaching aimed at improving basic academic knowledge and using the preventive system to improve behavior. This phase of the program involves teaching good hygiene, other daily living skills, and social skills.
On the other, it is accompanied by agricultural education sessions, which with a hands-on approach allow street children and youth to work on the land they know and learn the basics of farming and animal care. And while these activities keep them all busy, it also improves their well-being and self-esteem.
Subsequently, those who have begun to like the prospect of Salesian education can become part of the institutional program of care for young people: with the help of various professionals and social workers, and after a period of orientation, they are offered, as needed, formal schooling or informal education, hospitality, rehabilitation, psychological care, medical examinations, family reunification, until, then, family reintegration-where possible-or social reintegration, with accompaniment that continues even after the young person leaves the center's programs.
The heart of "Don Bosco Children" is its Vocational Training Center, which, with its different courses of study - Automotive, Electrical Installation, Metalworking, Leatherwork, Hotel Courses, Carpentry, and recently also Tailoring - initiates the recovered youth toward a future of professional skills, decent work, human and social affirmation.
At Don Bosco Children, nothing is left to chance and everything is used to improve the quality of what is offered in favor of street kids. One example: even the droppings of the farm animals are put to good use with a biogas recovery project, which, together with another sustainable energy project through photo-voltaics, allows the community to save resources to invest in Education, Health, Vocational Training, and Development Projects in favor of the “buoni monelli, or good rascals” as Fr. Regazzo is wont to call them.
All this and much more can be found and learned about by visiting the new website: https://boscochildren.com
