Over 300 Vulnerable Youths in Namibia Receive Nutritional Support from Salesian Missions

More than 80 youth also attend the daily oratory activities including sports programming.

“As a center we want to provide these children with breakfast and lunch every day so that we can stop them from going back to the streets to beg and to expose themselves to the evils that take place in the streets,” Fr. Louis reported.

Located 700km from the capital city, Windhoek, Rundu is the second largest city in Namibia lying on the borders of Angola, Zambia and Botswana. 

The city is a desert area making cultivation of food very difficult, thus leaving the population of close to 110,000 people in abject poverty.

To cushion the natives against hunger, the DB center intends to train people in food security so that “whatever they may produce through alternative farming, they can stock it for the future use instead of using it immediately,” Fr. Louis says.

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While Salesian Missions programs in the 2.4-million-population nation primarily focus on education, SDB members in Namibia strive to offer feeding support to youths who have dropped out of school, as well as vulnerable children.

“We appreciate the donor funding, which is helping us to feed the children,” Fr. Louis says.

Meanwhile, in Ethiopia, the Director of Bosco Children, Salesian Fr. Angelo Regazzo has explained why he could not dismiss the beneficiaries of the SDB program when the government directed the closure of all institutions of learning.

“We could not send the children gathered from the streets of Addis Ababa to the streets, they who had not yet finished the rehabilitation process to be reintegrated into their families. We would have lost them,” Fr. Angelo said in a report published by Agenzia Info Salesiana (ANS), the Salesians communication agency.

He further explains, “It was forbidden to go out and those very few who could go out and come back, including the driver, had to disinfect and wash thoroughly at the entrance gate. In this way, we have been able to stay healthy to date, but we must not let our guard down.”

Bosco Children have access to a library, computer school, sports, manual work, projection of educational videos, drawing competitions, as well as language study.

In their contribution towards curbing the spread of COVID-19, the Salesian Technical school within the center has set up a surgical mask factory that has distributed at least 15,000 masks for free.

“Every two or three days our driver with the pickup truck brings all these goods to the street children in the Assistance Centers and to many other poor people,” Fr. Angelo has reported.