ITALY: Shop raises funds for youth in need
Salesians for Social APS launches new Solidarity Shop
(MissionNewswire) Salesians for Social APS, a nonprofit organization, has been supporting youth in difficult circumstances for 25 years through foster homes and day care centers throughout Italy. It recently launched a new “Solidarity Shop” to generate financial support for projects that reduce forms of educational poverty, social exclusion, and marginalization of youth.
The shop has a selection of products designed to celebrate important milestones in life, such as birth, baptism, first communion, confirmation, graduation, marriage, birthdays and wedding anniversaries. New products, including parchments of different formats accompanied by decorated boxes for confetti, will arrive in the coming months.
The Solidarity Workshop was launched with a campaign dedicated to education. Salesians for Social APS also created its own “School Kit,” a gift designed for preschool children or those attending the first years of elementary school. The box has a bag and pencil case, crayons and markers, a package of glue, a notebook, and a specially designed coloring book.
A Salesian said, “Don Bosco repeatedly told us that ‘education is a thing of the heart,’ and it is not by chance that we thought of calling this new space ‘workshop,’ after those craft workshops in which our saint initiated his boys into a trade.”
Salesian programs across Italy help youth who are unable to attend school and others who drop out to work at the few jobs available to them. A growing number of children work as laborers on farms and others have turned to the sex trade to help support their families. Those in poverty often live without adequate shelter, hot water, regular meals and health care.
Poverty rose sharply in 2020 to its highest level in 15 years as the COVID-19 crisis brought economic challenges for much of the country. Close to 5.6 million people or 9.4 percent of the population are living in absolute poverty unable to buy goods or services to achieve a minimally acceptable standard of living, according to the World Bank. This number includes 1.3 million minors.
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Sources:
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Salesians for Social Solidarity Workshop
Salesian Missions – Italy
World Bank – Italy