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NEPAL: Salesian missionaries are continuing to provide education and technical training to poor youth

(MissionNewswire) Thirty students recently graduated from the Don Bosco Technical Institute located in Thecho, Nepal with certificates from its tailoring and beautician courses. Each program lasted for six months and included additional support in finding employment after graduation. In total, the institute has trained 642 students in these two courses since 2011.

The Don Bosco Technical Institute started with just one computer course and today has 11 CTEVT (Council for Technical Education and Vocational Training) affiliated courses and a diploma course in electrical engineering. Since its inception, it has graduated 1768 students from all its programs. Salesian missionaries are hoping to launch more diploma courses and offer a short awareness program to be held in the government schools within the neighborhood and neighboring municipalities.

“Many Salesian graduates have had rapid integration into the labor market as employees or entrepreneurs,” says Father Mark Hyde, director of Salesian Missions, the U.S. development arm of the Salesians of Don Bosco. “Most youth at Salesian institutions come from poor communities where the Salesian school was the only opportunity to receive an education. Salesian programs assess the local employment sector and offer courses that are most desirable and needed in the local workforce.”

In addition to Salesian institutes providing vocational and technical training, Salesian missionaries have continued to help Nepal with long-term reconstruction efforts after the devastating 7.8 earthquake that struck Nepal on April 25, 2015 and the second earthquake that struck just after that on May 12 as well as in regions that have been flood prone.

Salesian missionaries have built and launched a new play school for young children in the village of Mohanpur located in the Sarlahi District in the Janakpur Zone of southeastern Nepal. Mohanpur was one of the villages that was badly affected during the flood of Purbanchal in 2012. During relief distribution it was almost impossible for relief materials to reach the village as most of it was submerged under water. After the flood waters receded, Salesian missionaries wanted to do something to aid the village, especially to help poor and marginalized youth there.

Mohanpur donated a plot of land and Salesian missionaries provided teaching materials as well as galvanized iron sheets and bamboo to build the school building. The Gaunpalika, a newly formed lower administrative division in Nepal, granted the funding to construct a bathroom, level the area with mud and purchase a hand-pump for water and text books for students.

Students at the Don Bosco School Sirsia have contributed games and stationery to the children as well as volunteered to do manual labor by leveling the entry point of the village and teaching the children on the weekends.

The school, which opened in April 2018, has 35 students, begins at 10:00am each morning and ends at 2:00pm. The children love to come to the school and have proven to be very talented in their studies. The village residents are taking great pride in having a local school and have become more involved in their children’s academic lives.

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Sources:

Salesians of Don Bosco Nepal Newsletter October 2018