Stichting Don Bosco Rijswijk

About Stichting Don Bosco Rijswijk

Don Bosco Rijswijk is a Multicultural Youth Center with youth activities, after-school care, and room rental, focused on Rijswijk and The Hague. With holiday days during the school holidays, and the Vakantiebos during the big school holidays. The center has many indoor and outdoor facilities, making it very suitable for youth, groups and family gatherings.

Method

Don Bosco's way of working with young people is known as the 'preventive pedagogical system'. It can be summarized with a few key concepts. Presence is its core. Not to 'check' young people, but to 'be there' and thus build a relationship with them.

Love is the binding element in the system. Young people need to feel that attention is being paid to them 'from the inside'. Dialogue means that the working method is not a one-way street. By entering into a dialogue, young people feel taken seriously and are more motivated to bear responsibility – a fourth key concept – for themselves and for others. Stimulating means that young people come to discover and further develop their own possibilities.

Don Bosco took trust for granted. Instead of treating young people as immature and indepen- dent, he gave them his confidence to develop. After all, growing people need space, literally and figuratively: to play, to experiment, but also to make mistakes and correct them again.