As the year 2025 com­menced we were delighted to wel­come on board a new fund­ing part­ner, as com­mit­ted as we are to the sup­port of mar­gin­alised chil­dren and young people inter­nation­ally.

Estab­lished back in 1980, Don Bosco Mondo sup­ports pro­jects run by the Salesians of Don Bosco and the Salesian Sis­ters of Don Bosco, in 130 coun­tries.

India has been a regional focus for the Aumund Found­ation from the very begin­ning of its fund­ing activ­ities. We are pleased that our fin­ancial sup­port has now enabled a sig­nific­ant pro­ject of the Salesians to be revived after its forced ter­min­ation as a res­ult of the pan­demic. The organ­isa­tion has estab­lished a child­care centre with a pre-school, and even­ing classes for chil­dren and young men and women from the Linga­rajapuram slum in Ban­galore in South­ern India.

As well as bene­fit­ting from a calm learn­ing envir­onment the chil­dren receive bal­anced meals, which would oth­erwise not neces­sar­ily be avail­able to them. The aim of the pro­ject is to break the cycle of poverty by provid­ing com­pre­hens­ive and sus­tain­able edu­cational sup­port.

In the “Hol­istic Edu­cation in Karnataka” pro­ject, we com­bine our fund­ing pri­orit­ies of edu­cation and health: In addi­tion to expand­ing a school with classrooms, labor­ator­ies, and san­itary facil­ities to accom­mod­ate more stu­dents, we are build­ing learn­ing and activ­ity cen­ters for chil­dren in 15 par­tic­ularly remote vil­lages in part­ner­ship with Don Bosco. These cen­ters pro­mote school edu­cation and facil­itate events. Another focus is voca­tional train­ing for young people with phys­ical and men­tal dis­abil­ities. The pro­ject is roun­ded out by mobile health­care ser­vices in 20 vil­lages (basic med­ical care, health edu­cation, med­ica­tion dis­tri­bution, and annual camps).