“In Bolivia, I saw the involvement of these teachers, the love, the passion. Some cried while talking to us”

La Libre and the NGO Via Don Bosco take a reader to Bolivia

The winner will participate in a review conference open to readers of La Libre, this November 20 at 7 p.m. in our premises. Journalists from The Free and members of Via Don Bosco will speak, following the broadcast of a 20-minute documentary produced on site. It’s also a way to discover a relatively unknown country which is currently experiencing multiple crises: environmental, political, economic… “To the people who will attend the conference, I would like to really talk about this bravery that I encountered there, in the schools and among the people we sawexplains Audrey Salina first. They were people with such courage, very involved. I have rarely seen people with so little have so much strength.”

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“He would have pushed the walls to accommodate more students”

This civil servant from Walloon Brabant who has the advantage of speaking Spanish, the local language, was marked by a few personalities in particular, notably among the professors or “internship supervisors” with whom the group was regularly able to interact. Like this mechanic from Santa Cruz who welcomed students from a Salesian technical school supported by Via Don Bosco for internships in his workshop. “I saw the involvement of these teachers, the love, the passion. This mechanic was crying while talking to us. He himself had “arrived” there and would have pushed back the walls of his garage to accommodate even more students whom he could help. He had incredible devotion to his work and to this transfer of knowledge. It was deeper than that: I will always remember him saying: ‘I’m trying to clear the path so that they don’t have the same difficulties as me’.” This mother of a child with high potential, and who experienced the difficulties of finding an educational environment”human” for a child with specific needs, was also attracted by the educational approach of the Salesian network (founded by the monks of Don Bosco): beyond competence and grades, the schools focused on self-confidence, whatever the young person’s past. “It’s really the fact that no matter where you come from, no matter what someone may have broken in you, no matter what may have happened to you (rape, parental abandonment, etc.), you have the right to ‘be happy. You have the right to success. You have the right to be well. I find that in all the schools we went to, it was the vector. It was really about the reconstruction, more than the personality, the soul, the heart, the belief in oneself.”

“When Notre-Dame de Paris burned, the world was moved. Here, it is our forests – the lungs of the planet – which are burning. What is the difference?”

Theoretically, after 20 years of presence, the Via Don Bosco teams will leave Bolivia in 2026. The objective of the NGO is in fact to make the beneficiaries autonomous after a certain time. Except that in Bolivia, the crisis has passed that way… “It is obviously positive to aim for long-term autonomy, it gives power back to people over their abilities, Judge Audrey Salina. But I think that Via Don Bosco should not come out right away, certainly not in the middle of an economic crisis! I fear that some projects will disappear due to lack of funding…”