It was the II Assembly held since the European Federation became a World-wide Network of NGO, and at the same time transferred its headquarters from Bonn to Rome. Taking part in the meeting chaired by the President, Mrs. Françoise Leonarde, were 18 representatives of the 8 organisations involved in supporting the Salesian Missions as well as Fr Vacláv Klement, Councillor for the Mission, and Fr Stanislaw Rafalko, Delegate for the Mission Offices and the NGO.
The morning was spent identifying some ways of making the net-work process more effective on the basis of an internal enquiry of the 8 NGO carried out before the General Assembly. The members were looking for ways of improving the quality of the help provided for the missions, but especially for arriving at common ideas about development and the ways of relating better to those who at the receiving end in the various countries.
Among the subjects considered were that of the sharing of information and of good practice; the development of common procedures in order to identify, monitor, report on and evaluate projects; relationships between DBN and the Mission Offices; the development of joint action in the initiation, promotion and patronage of events.
Special attention was given to an analysis of the plan for aid to Haiti, where all the members of the Network are engaged on the front line, which could serve as a starting point for future common aid projects.
Among forms of good practice identified to make the efforts of the members more effective were the education to development–solidarity carried out by the NGO in hundreds of public schools in Germany, Italy, Belgium and Spain; education at a distance through the new media, in the form of ’“e-learning” and of “social networking” and in the field of social education for street children; education to human rights and to cooperation for development in which thousands of Salesian Past Pupils are already engaged.
In the afternoon there was the presentation of the new digital platform, (www.donbosconetwork.org) developed and administered by the Director General of the DBN, Mrs Milly Grillone. It will serve both to publicise the activities of the DBN to the outside and to facilitate the exchange of information on the inside, sharing documents connected with educational programmes, the common database and news and information about the numerous projects being carried out in over 100 countries. The Assembly also agreed that to foster greater synergy among the groups, according to the sectors and the geographical areas, use could be made of a system of video conferencing.
Finally the General Assembly chose the new logo for DBN.
In addition, between Friday 15 and Sunday 17 October, also at the Salesianum in Rome, there will be a meeting of the Salesian-associated NGO, with the purpose of sharing more and making more practical the common principles and examples of good practice.
Published 14/10/2010
