For many minor indigenous people the right to education is not taken for granted and the percentage of access to schooling is very low. These are the privileged realities for the action of the Salesians who, after the example of Don Bosco, try in every possible way to provide for the integral education and the construction of paths of hope for the most marginalized children and youth.
This is, for instance, the case of Brazilian Mato Grosso, by the “Parque Indígena do Xingú”, an area created in 1961 to host 14 different tribes and preserve their lands and their specificities. The Salesians work with the Kalapalo and Kuikuro indigenous and have developed a three-year-long project for 220 beneficiaries, the majority of whom are minor, so as to make them autonomous within the shortest possible time.
The aim is to help indigenous chiefs to obtain the right to public and free education and to promote the formation of indigenous teachers, as well as the production of didactic subsidies to integrate indigenous culture with the surrounding world. All this is done within a broader activity aiming at preserving and increasing the value of the indigenous cultures of Mato Grosso, through initiatives of human, sanitary and educative promotion and the protection of territorial resources.
Always in Brazil, but in the State of Amazonas, the Salesians are engaged in the promotion of education for indigenous children in Iauaretê. The minors that are accepted by the Salesians are often abandoned and exposed to all sorts of danger.
For these minors, the opportunity to study in a safe and qualified environment is perhaps the only occasion they have to build up for themselves a dignified present and future.
