The educational and Salesian ecosystem in which DBTech Europe was born has its origins in the late 1990s with the first 'foreign student exchange programme' that began to be called as the 'Erasmus programme' in the early 2000s.
Few years ago, the Youth Pastoral Sector of the Salesians of Don Bosco began to train the European Erasmus project leaders (project planners). These were the collaborators who were specialized in writing, managing, and reporting on cross-national European projects which were aimed at developing activities in the educational and pedagogical fields.
After an incubation period of about 12 years, this "so-called group of European planners" grew from a small core group into a team of about 120 people spread over about 22 countries. It was then decided to formalize the birth of this network, which will enable the promotion of education, training standards, job opportunities and Salesian values without national barriers.
In short, in the full spirit of Don Bosco, the fledgling reality of Don Bosco Tech Europe today caters to over 86,200 students who undertake various training courses at Salesian Vocational Training Centres or technical schools, manned by over 7,085 collaborators and over 350 loyal companies which employ the trained students across 22 European and non-European countries.
On Friday 20 October, the President, who is also the General Councillor for the Salesian Youth Pastoral dimension, Fr Miguel Angel García Morcuende, will illustrate the values and traditions on which DBTech Europe is based and will operate. He will stress upon the aim of not only being a training platform for young people and adults, but also to provide actual employment opportunities especially to the most vulnerable persons of the society, in order to maximize the social impact of Salesian work.
After this, the Executive Director, Piero Fabris, will present the statistics and development strategies of the network over the next three years. The audience will consist of Professional Trainers (who have just concluded two days of structuring the annual action plan for 2023-2024, in terms of mobility and European cooperation between Salesian and non-Salesian organisations), and other representatives of companies and enterprises, about. In particular, he will focus on the role of companies as training partners for the Salesian Institutes, in the light of an increasingly liquid labour market which arises from a fragile social balance.
