Salesians launch new building to educate women at vocational training center in Formosa

(MissionNewswire) Salesian missionaries launched a new building at a vocational training center in Formosa, Argentina. The building is dedicated to Mary Help of Christians and was built and equipped as part of the “Women and Work” project to improve the living situation of women through job training. The training center includes study areas, multifunctional offices, green spaces, and a kindergarten for the care of children while their mothers are busy in classes or at workshops.

The new building complements the existing vocational training center, which has been providing education for the past 55 years. Young women and men take courses to find stable employment and become self-sufficient. With the new space, Salesians will offer new courses in maternal and child care assistance, gerontological assistance, event organization, computer science, tailoring, microenterprise start-up, aesthetics, hairdressing, and design.

Father Horacio Barbieri, provincial of the Salesian Saint Artemide Zatti Province of North Argentina, said, “We are convinced that work is the best tool to foster social integration and give dignity to people. Today the Salesian community, attentive to the needs of all, is called to take charge through concrete actions of the needs of our contemporaries. It is our desire to value the personal dignity of every human being and to be custodians of the inalienable rights of each person.”

The building was made possible thanks to funding from the German government’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Don Bosco World Mission Office, based in Bonn, Germany, among others.

More than a quarter of the people in Argentina live in conditions of poverty with no formal employment and poor-quality education, according to the World Bank. The country’s high school dropout rate is close to 37 percent and youth account for a third of those unemployed. Almost 12 percent of children ages 5-17 are working instead of being in school and 20 percent need government assistance. Many face malnutrition, a lack of clean water and sewage, and inadequate housing.

###

Sources:

ANS Photo (usage permissions and guidelines must be requested from ANS)

ANS – Argentina – New Vocational Training Center inaugurated in Formosa

Salesian Missions – Argentina

World Bank – Argentina