About IYM
In a world characterised by globalisation, urbanisation, fragmentation and inequality, the contemporary African society is easily exploited in its most vulnerable aspects of multi-poverty, conflict, endemic and pandemic diseases, which affect adversely especially the weakest, the defenceless, the poorest. Targets and victims of this situation are particularly children and young people
are constantly threatened and at risk for their physical and moral lives.
This reality of the youth scenario challenges the Salesian Family to respond by empowering young people to believe in themselves and to assume the commitment to be protagonists of transformation in the society. To this end, the founding of the Institute of Youth Ministry (IYM) is our prophetic contribution.
Particularly relevant to this venture are the words of Pope John Paul II in Ecclesia in Africa “… Dear young people, the Synod asks you to take in hand the development of your countries, to love the culture of your people, and to work for its renewal with fidelity to your cultural heritage, through a sharpening of your scientific and technical expertise, and above all through the witness of your Christian faith” (EA 115).
Moreover, the 13th Plenary Assembly of AMECEA (July-August 1999) passed this urgent resolution: “Priests, religious and laity with a charism for youth ministry shall be identified, trained and appointed to minister to youth (both in and out of school) through teaching the faith, patient counselling and the witness of their own lives”(Resolution 3.2).
The Institute of Youth Ministry takes its main inspiration from the Salesian educative charism, which can be expressed as educating through evangelisation and evangelising through education, according to a plan for the total well being of all, directed to Christ, the perfect Man. This spiritual and educational experience is a way of living and of handing on the gospel message, and of working with and through the young for their integral development.
The Institute of Youth Ministry is at the service of the local Church in Africa, as a component of Tangaza College, linked to the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA) according to the Charter of Constituent Colleges.
The setting up, leadership and animation of this Institute is undertaken in partnership by the Salesians of Don Bosco (SDB) and the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians (Salesian Sisters of Don Bosco, FMA), envisioning collaboration from the Salesian Pontifical University (UPS) and the Faculty of Sciences of Education, Auxilium (FMA), Rome.
The congregations of the Salesians of Don Bosco (SDB) and the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians (Salesian Sisters of Don Bosco, FMA) were founded in the 19th century by St John Bosco and St Maria Domenica Mazzarello in order to care for and educate young people.
Don Bosco attempted at re-writing the Gospel Beatitudes for the poorest and most abandoned young people of his time – those no one really cared for.
Don Bosco and Maria Domenica Mazzarello, inspired by the Spirit and through the direct intervention of Mary of Nazareth have, in their educational charism, made real to young people the presence of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, who gives His life in abundance.
They spent their lives listening to the “cry for life” of the young people of their time and seeking a real and practical response to their questions and needs.
In the reality in which the SDB and FMA live and work, they express, in different ways, their predilection for the poor young people, lived in obedience to the words of Jesus “Anyone who welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me” (Mt 18:5).
