Salesian Mission Offices Look Towards the Future

(ANS – Rome – February 11) – The world conference of those responsible for Salesian mission offices, held in Rome last month, has marked the roadmap for the future path of these organizations. For the concrete support of the Salesian mission in the world, the mission offices are called to act along four lines: greater subsidiarity, solidarity, effectiveness, and transparency.

The specific objectives are:

• Subsidiarity: Each province or vice province is called to become progressively more self-sustaining. This means finding the necessary resources within their own province or country, thus reducing the dependence on foreign aid. Hence the provinces will have to develop their own capability to look for and gather funds locally. Provinces that have not started local fundraising are called upon to do so.
• Solidarity: Every province and every mission office (procura, in Italian) will, however, bear in mind the entire Congregation and contribute to those which have greater needs and fewer resources.
• Effectiveness: The mission offices will have to learn the most effective ways of finding resources, methods which change with the times. So those in charge of the mission offices are working for greater collaboration among all the mission offices. Important steps in the growth of effectiveness and efficiency include the building of a valid brand that is global, the sharing of material for communication, and the broadcasting of similar, cohesive, and coherent messages.
• Transparency: The Salesian standards of fundraising and administration will go beyond the simple demands of the general public. Therefore a general code of ethics at the congregational level will be drawn up, and each province or vice province will also formulate its own rules to adhere to.

Today the mission offices are indispensable organizations for the Salesian mission. The guidelines identified and set down will serve to help ever better and more effectively the young people in need whom Don Bosco loved so much.