Fr Felice Molino, 73, a Salesian missionary for 39 years in Kenya, has no doubts about the importance of making known to the world the value of helping others, especially if they are minors, innocent victims, whose childhood has been stolen, as has their dignity, all kinds of rights, not least of which also education. Fr Felice, who in Nairobi is engaged with the other Salesian missionaries in the Bosco Boys, where street children are welcomed and followed over time, feels like he is the father of these children on the margins of society, and always speaks of them with emotion because he cares for that they really do have a future. “That of street children is a phenomenon that affects the whole world, but especially the big cities of Africa,” says Fr Felice. “Many run away from their families ... I am always struck on seeing their scarred faces, wounded by the blows they take, both from those who chase them away from home, and from the bosses who exploit them. And then the dirt in which they live, the filthiness of their clothes ... They are situations of degradation and great abandonment with which African children are forced to deal with every day.”
Every street child brings with him or her a story of poverty, family tragedies, violence, persecutions, in many cases even of forced migration. Since 1991 Don Bosco's missionaries have the stories of each child at heart, children with whom they come into contact by looking for them in the streets of the metropolises because they know that there are families so poor that they send their children on the street to look for money or food, or they are the children themselves to escape from family situations of violence and extreme degradation.
Defending the rights of children and kids on the margins of society is also part of the mission of Giacomo Comino, aka Jim, a Salesian with 50 years of mission very close to Sudan. In recent years he has dealt in particular with South Sudan and the "school project" and has struggled with all his strength to bring education and transform it into a tool of redemption for the youngest of a country devastated by the civil war and plagued by violence and abuse.
“My place is alongside the poorest families and children, who live in a situation of extreme poverty and famine. I want to give them inspiration and hope, for a more human future, living the Christian spirit.”
Roberto Panetto is another Salesian who, in Cambodia in Sihanoukville, looks after minors who are exploited and in conditions of immense vulnerability. After 14 years spent in Thailand in Salesian works dedicated to the neediest children, he has now been in Cambodia for several years, one of the countries with the greatest problems of child trafficking in the world. Many girls and boys are exploited and often forced into prostitution. In the capital Phnom Penh alone, around 23,000 children live on the streets, while in the whole country there are about 380,000 orphans that families are unable to provide for. It is a country where many children live and die in factories. Poverty and social uncertainty mark the lives of Cambodians from an early age, and for them Roberto and the other Salesians are a constant presence of welcome, care, aid, support to regain dignity and take small steps towards the future.
Source: Missioni Don Bosco
