(ANS – Heverlee) –Don Bosco Youth-Net (DBYN) celebrated its 10th anniversary in the style of the network: for and by young people. Last weekend it held a European seminar and the celebration itself.

It started on Thursday evening 13 October with the seminar ‘Enhancing Volunteer Mobility’. bearing in mind 2011 is the European Year of Volunteering, and focussing on strengthening and increasing the opportunities for young people to engage as volunteers in Don Bosco Youth-Net.

A group of around 30 participants took part in the seminar, both young volunteers and staff of our member organisations, coming from all DBYN’s member organisations. During the day there were workshops on the challenges identified by the EU for volunteering and on the opportunities for mobility projects through the Lifelong Learning-programme.  Those taking part also had the opportunity to share their good practices amongst the member organisation and to create new projects at an exchange market.

on Saturday afternoon 15 October the group at the seminar was joined by 40 guests to celebrate 10 years together.  In her welcoming speech Lieve Van Aerschot, President of DBYN, looked back at the first decade of DBYN. Afterwards Fr Fabio Attard, General Councillor for Youth Ministry, and Luca Scarpiello, Vice-President of the European Youth Forum, expressed their hopes for the future of the network.  After a playful intermezzo the whole group went into debate on youth mobility.Fr Fabio Attard celebrated Mass and afterwards Volunteers of Jeugddienst Don Bosco prepared and served a Belgian-style dinner.

Published 20/10/2011