Comprehensive education makes young people fit to face the current world

Abstract

The interest of addressing education as a tool to prevent violence arises from the experience obtained through the educational work carried out by the Fundación Salvador del Mundo (Salvador del Mundo Foundation, FUSALMO, given its Spanish acronym) with young people who are at risk and live under serious socio-economic constraints. A lot has been said about the role played by education in the development of a country, however, little has been stated about its impact. After all, education is much more than merely transmitting new knowledge to a person.

More than ten years ago, FUSALMO decided to trust the Programa Integral Juvenil Don Bosco (Don Bosco’s Youth Integral Program--PIJDB, given its Spanish acronym) which turned to be a complementary educational offer to the formal educational system offered by the Ministry of Education, in the face of the numerous limitations experienced in major towns with a high population and an increasing violence rate. It is targeted to the teenage student population threatened by the amount of violence in their communities and who live under vulnerable economic and social conditions. The program is currently developed at Don Bosco´s three sports centers located in the country´s major cities (San Miguel, Santa Ana and Soyapango).

Entorno, april 2014, issue 55: 33-37