“Group Experience with a Salesian Flavour”

Learning to live, grow and achieve as a group is an essential dimension of every Salesian Educative Pastoral Plan. In line with this, Salesian Youth Ministry model, the Salesian Province of Chennai is leaving no stone unturned to recapture the importance of ‘Group Experience’ for all our beneficiaries at all our centers. On 30th August 2009, a meeting of all the heads of the professional institutions (VTCs, ITCs, and Polytechnics) was held at Citadel at 3.00 p.m. under the patronage of Rev. Fr. Joe Andrew sdb, the Vice-Provincial. Fr. Antony Christy sdb, the commission head for Groups and Movements in the province, was the facilitator for the meeting.

He talked about the importance of group experience and invited those gathered to arrive at a consensus regarding the number and type of groups to be made mandatory for all our professional institutions. After a sufficient amount of discussion and brainstorming, it was decided to have compulsorily the following groups at all our professional institutions, apart from other groups specific to each place. They are, Media Club, Eco Club, Voluntary Service Group and Prayer Cells.It was exhorted to cull out some lay animators from our staff who will be animated at the Province level in forming and running the above mentioned groups. All these groups formed at our centers will eventually be networked at province level so as to give an enhanced group experience. This worthy effort of all the Salesians and the collaborators is going to pay rich dividends in terms of an escalated personality growth of our youth and a generous self-giving of themselves to the society.