On 10 July 2023, Brother Peter Bray, FSC, and Fr Pietro Bianchi, SDB, signed a partnership agreement between the University of Bethlehem, an initiate stemming from Pope Paul VI and run by the de La Salle Brothers, and the Salesian Technical Institute, for the start of a Faculty of Engineering in Renewable Energies; the second semester of the first year of the five-year course is currently underway, with online classes and manual exercises in person.
In addition, on Saturday, 17 February 2024, a partnership agreement was signed by Fr Lorenzo Saggiotto, SDB, and Fr George Haddad, OFM, between Salesians and Franciscans for the joint management of a two-year period technical baccalaureate: students will receive theoretical lessons in the classrooms at the Terra Santa College, and will do their practical training in Salesian workshops for practical learning. Upon completion, graduates will thus have easy access to the aforementioned Faculty of Engineering.
These new, long-term projects are accompanied by two-year professional training courses, active for decades, with specialisations in carpentry, mechanics, mechatronics, electricity, PLC, and recent ones of variable duration: graphic design, digital marketing, photovoltaics... These are courses that attract hundreds of students every year: young adults, Christians and Muslims, men and women.
Nor should we forget the other sector of activity of the Salesian work, the oven, recently equipped with new fermentation and baking plants, which continues to make excellent bread sold daily to those who can afford it, or donated for free to about a hundred poor families.
Thus, in these difficult times due to the ongoing war, religious dedicated to the education of young people seek, together, to be close to them and to families in need, reviving common hope for a better future. All this, thanks also to the support of many local and foreign benefactors.
