The Salesian Project Ecuador is active in seven cities in the country (Ambato, Cuenca, Esmeraldas, Guayaquil, Quito, San Lorenzo and Santo Domingo) with 28 care facilities where 6,471 people find accompaniment and opportunities to transform their lives.
These include:
• 529 people without work;
• 504 families from marginalised neighbourhoods and overcrowded settlements;
• 958 children engaged in child labour, whose right to education is being restored;
• 656 people from indigenous and Afro-descendent communities, whose identity and social development are being promoted;
• 695 people assisted on a daily basis, through psychological support, school reinforcement, parenting skills workshops, canteens and human and spiritual accompaniment.
Don Bosco is alive in the Salesian Project. In the missions with the Afro-descendent communities of Esmeraldas, San Lorenzo, Santo Domingo and Guayaquil, the PSE works side by side with the communities, promoting access to quality education and the defence of their rights, in environments marked by poverty, social risks and armed conflicts.
Preventive presence on the streets is the hallmark of this Salesian mission. Through street educators, the ESP identifies and accompanies children and adolescents in vulnerable contexts, promoting their access and permanence in educational environments. Similarly, the P. Antonio Amador Basic Education Schools in Guayaquil, and San Patricio (UESPA), in Quito, take care of children and adolescents who are lagging behind in school, in child labour situations and who accompany their families in informal work. And the same happens through the four Vocational Training Centres that are part of the project.
‘Don Bosco continues to transform lives thanks to the four foundations that make up the Salesian Project Ecuador (Zona Norte, Costa Norte, Guayaquil and PACES),’ say Camila Cárdenas, Evelin Mendoza and Andrea Altafuya, of the National Communication Commission of the PSE.
‘Today,’ they continue, ’more than a century after his death, Don Bosco is still present in these spaces, places where every person is listened to, every young person finds opportunities and every family receives support to move forward. His dream continues through the Salesian Project Ecuador which, day after day, works so that rights are guaranteed to all and are not the privilege of a few’.
‘We continue to build paths of dignity and justice for the most vulnerable young people: Don Bosco lives in each of these faces,’ they conclude.
Source: Salesianos.org.ec
