(ANS - Madrid)- The Summer months are a good time, not only to rest and relax, but also to devote some of our time to others by doing some kind of voluntary work.

                                                                                          by Luis Martín Cabello.

Many young people take part as volunteers in camps and in various activities of leisure and social service according to the opportunities. It is also a good time for another type of voluntary service that reaches out beyond our borders.

A group of twenty young people aged between twenty-four and forty, including a family with their children, will go to Angola, Benin, Bolivia, Ghana, Ecuador, Guatemala and Mexico. They will work in different projects within the Salesian mission: with street children, in reception centres, oratories and youth centres, training teachers, leaders and catechists. Even more important is their ability to absorb and be enriched by what they find there, sharing experiences that challenge their way of understanding life.

Some of the volunteers come from Salesian works (Atocha, Salamanca, Valladolid, Alcalá, Soto del Real, Aranjuez, Leon ...), while others are coming to us for the first time, and immediately they experience a sense of warmth and family spirit.

They all have to follow a training programme which started in December 2014 and was held every weekend in Valladolid, Madrid and La Cabrera (Madrid). It concluded with an emotional sending-out ceremony in Mohernando (Guadalajara) at the end of June.

We know that these voluntary services cannot solve the problems of the places where they go, but we believe in the transformation that can result, beginning with the person of the volunteers, then continuing in their places of origin (Salesian, workplace, family, etc.), and why not, with the great wealth that they bring, also in the places that receive them.

Text from Voluntariado Salesiano

publiced 04/04/2015