Fruits of our synodal path with Don Bosco indigenous youth

Since the opening of Don Bosco Technical School in Kep Province in 2011, it has been always important to us to connect our educational project to the environment, being a part of the Kep National Park and to offer a campus that is green, but also a cultural site to the Cambodian children and youth. The school has its doors open to what the Cambodian identity means: A multicultural, multireligious and eco-educational environment, where the presence of the ancestral knowledge is present among the daily training of youth for an integral human development.

Four years before the proclamation of Laudato si (2015), we put the Cross of Saint Francis of Assisi (tha Tao Cross) in our campus, overlooking the Kep Bay and, in extension, overlooking the Holy City of Jerusalem, according to the tradition. Over the Tao Cross, there was the Brother Sun, remembering the first sentence of the Chant of the Creatures and this one as a sign of the presence of Jesus, a symbol of ecumenism in a land of Buddhist, Muslims, Indigenous spiritualities and Christianity and a perpetual chant to the beauty and peace of Creation.

In January of this year we celebrated for two days the Voices program, where our own indigenous students, mostly from Ratanakiri province, and other youth and elders from 8 indigenous groups of Cambodia, could talk and discuss about their worries and proposals for a Synodal Church. In March the invitation was done to Asian young indigenous and for ten days we led a training in media production, while continuing our Voices program.

We are satisfied with the results of connection, reflection and exploring possibilities to open more doors, in such a manner that our young people, especially those from vulnerable communities like farmers and indigenous, but also migrants and all those in troubles, could find a campus that is green, with a Jungle-Garden inside a school and an academic community where the Salesian values of prevention, love, reason and spirituality are present.

For this reason, we are very much happy to present the results of the Declaration Of The Young Asian Indigenous Peoples.

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