With the support of the Foundation, starting from September 2023 the Salesians of Don Bosco carried out a nine-month intervention aimed at offering new study and training opportunities to 197 Syrian girls and young women, between the ages of 6 and 17, in emergency conditions.

Intervening in Syria means dealing with the state of structural emergency of the population, already exhausted by the civil war and further devastated by the earthquake in February 2023. And one of the most devastated primary services is the one of education. Over 7,000 schools have been damaged or completely destroyed. Today, girls and boys who attend school have to face the daily challenges of overcrowded classrooms, lack of materials, few teachers and often unprepared to manage the psychological consequences of an emergency. Often the only schools in the territories are private ones and families are forced to get into debt to send young people to school.

With the support of Confindustria Cisambiente, we have started an important intervention that is part of the great range of Salesian activities characterized by the combination of ‘Emergency and Education’. DON BOSCO NEL MONDO Foundation has helped the Salesians active in Damascus to offer girls and young women the opportunity to enroll at school and overcome, thanks to education, a trauma that would risk not only marking them forever, but compromising their future life.

At the oratory-youth center of Damascus, girls with learning difficulties caused by socio-relational problems and post-traumatic stress are offered an afternoon school support and remedial program, speech therapy, and individual support meetings. In order to activate pedagogical processes of integral development and reduction of inequalities, 103 children and teen-agers have also been included in the educational program.