Salesian Volunteering for Mission

Called to Be Mission
A Global Movement for Salesian Volunteering

The missionary volunteers advisory board with Fr. Fabio Attard (4th from left).
Adam Rudin (3d from left) directs the Salesian Lay Missioners of the Eastern U.S.-Canada Province. JC Montenegro (far right) directs those of the U.S. Western Province.

(ANS – Rome – June 11, 2025) – Something beautiful continues growing within the Salesian Family: a renewed desire to strengthen and accompany the missionary heart of our young people. Over the past 3 years, the Salesian Missionary Volunteering (SMV) Advisory Team has been working to create a network among SMV programs and provide accompaniment. Last week, the advisory team met to evaluate the first strategic plan and create a way forward.

Grounded in Reality, Inspired by Mission

The result is the 2025–2027 Strategic Plan, not just a document but a shared dream: to support Salesian Missionary Volunteering at the global level with fundamental tools, formation, and accompaniment.

“This is our second strategic plan,” said one of the team members, “and the heart of it is simple: we want to promote the missionary volunteer experience across the whole Congregation. We want more young people to discover the joy of giving themselves to the mission.”

Listening to the Congregation: GC29 as Our Guide

This plan didn’t come out of nowhere. It was born from the reflection of the GC29 and the conversations about synodality, young people, and co-responsibility in mission.

At its core, the plan echoes two strong calls from GC29:

– To work together across sectors, with shared leadership and collaboration.

– And to entrust the mission more and more to young laypeople, walking with them, forming them, and listening to their voices.

Everything in the plan reflects that desire to build connections, accompany processes, and make space for accessible, contextual, and truly missionary formation.

“It Emerges from the Reality” – Fr. Fabio Attard

The SMV Advisory Team met with Fr. Fabio Attard during their meeting. He offered not just encouragement, but deep reflections and a spiritual horizon.

“I feel very happy that we have this group,” Fr. Attard said. “It emerges from the reality.”

He reminded the team that their role is not to build more structures but to remain a space of discernment, animation, and accompaniment. “Even what we don’t achieve,” he said, “is an opportunity.” He invited the team to reflect on how the volunteer experience is a lived experience—not just doing things but becoming who you are called to be.

Fr. Attard challenged everyone to think about formation differently: “How are our volunteers being formed? Are they part of a process—or just serving one? Formation isn’t just about content. It’s about helping young people breathe the charism of Don Bosco.”

He also pointed to a crucial reality: We must accompany our young people. His words reminded us that our task is not just organizational. It’s deeply spiritual. “The charismatic dimension must be breathing in and out,” he said. We need to do it because they deserve it.

The Plan: Form, Connect, Animate

The strategic plan itself focuses on 3 significant areas:

– To develop spaces and processes where formation, collaboration, and networking can accompany and support SMV Coordinators 

– To develop spaces and processes where formation, collaboration, and networking can accompany and support other SMV stakeholders

– Effective governance and operation of the Advisory Team to ensure the development of the SMV to enhance the Salesian mission.

It’s not about doing more things; it’s about doing them together and doing them well.

A Global Culture of Giving

The dream is bigger than any single action plan. The Advisory Team hopes to foster a movement, a culture where young people are trusted, accompanied, and invited into something bigger than themselves.

“We want to promote a movement that empowers young people, through our current structures, to give themselves to the mission,” one of the team members shared. “That’s what this is really about.”

With the continued support of the rector major, the general council, and the provinces, this new chapter for Salesian Missionary Volunteering is taking shape, not from the top down, but from the heart out.

To Every Salesian: This is Your Mission, Too

To all Salesians—SDBs, lay mission partners, animators, coordinators, and formators—this is a call to walk together.

Let’s build this movement with the young. Let’s accompany them with courage and tenderness. Let’s create a missionary culture that doesn’t just do good but reveals who we are.

As Fr. Attard reminded us: “Education is about sowing. The journey is based on people.”

And in the missionary volunteering experience, that journey continues now, daring heart, planting seeds of hope wherever we go.