Dear friends,
Artificial intelligence presents us with a challenge.
We are called – especially as Salesians – to be ever more attentive and approachable towards young people, who are looking for a point of reference in significant adults. In the absence of such adults, they do not think twice about asking ChatGPT for help, where they find advice and comfort, but they do not find that kind of interaction which can only be had with real people. In a world increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence, we must transform our homes, our churches and our courtyards into oases where young people can come together and find attentive educators to help them face the challenges specific to their age.
Let us continue to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, in the manner of Don Bosco, by being deeply human, educating and evangelizing with true intelli-gence.
▀ Fr Pedro André SDB
Director of the ANS– Agenzia iNfo Salesiana
In the arid landscape of Korr in Marsabit County, Kenya, caring for scarce water resources is a critical lifeline for community survival. This desert region suffers severe droughts, erratic rainfall averaging just 190–205 mm annually, and immense evapotranspiration. Traditional surface water sources dry up quickly, leaving semi-nomadic pastoralist families and their livestock exposed to devastating climate shocks. Groundwater is no easier: boreholes are costly to drill and often yield limited, saline water. Harvesting short-term seasonal surface flows through structured damming has therefore become the only viable way to sustain life here, requiring innovative civil engineering and careful conservation strategies.
Humanitarian organizations like us, the Salesians of Don Bosco, have traditionally partnered with donors to dig boreholes for pastoralist populations. Going forward, experts need to evaluate floodwater harvesting by damming seasonal dry streams. Surveys along the Balah River show that earth dams can effectively capture the brief runoff from sporadic rainy seasons. Depending on funding, designs ranging from small to large reservoirs could secure up to 250,000 cubic meters of storage capacity, protected by geotextile membranes and riprap to limit losses from evaporation and seepage.
Properly managing water resources brings major social, health, and economic benefits to thousands of pastoralist inhabitants. Clean local water access would relieve the exhausting burden on women and children, who often trek up to 20 kilometers to fetch contaminated water. Reliable storage would improve health by reducing malnutrition and waterborne illness, while sustaining thousands of cattle, sheep, and goats. Integrating technologies like drip irrigation could also shift mentalities, enabling pastoralists to cultivate vegetables at least twice a year. Ultimately, protecting every drop through local management committees could form the structural baseline for health, dignity, and long-term climate resilience in arid environments.
▀ Dr. Samuel Ébalé
DBDON Coordinator, AFE Province, Kenya
Dear Father Andrei, we asked you to grant us an interview because you have access to so many Salesian information sources, and you manage the Salesian Online Bulletin and various databases. Could you tell us a bit more about this?
The Salesian Online Bulletin, www.donbosco.press, is an initiative launched by the Rector Major Emeritus, Fr Ángel Fernández Artime, to continue the print edition in the digital world. Through its multilingual presence, it aims to speak with a single “voice”, yet one capable of reaching different people, cultures and contexts.
The evolution of the media makes this necessary. The Salesian search engine DBInfo, www.donbosco.info, arose from the practical need for easily accessible Salesian sources for the drafting and verification of articles. However, from the outset it was conceived not only as an internal tool, but as a service open to all those who wish to learn more about Don Bosco and his charism. In this sense, DBInfo expands the very mission of the Salesian Bulletin: to raise awareness of, explore in depth and disseminate the Salesian heritage. It is already a very powerful tool, destined to grow further in both functionality and content.
We are well aware that, these days, having access to information is essential. Another issue is how to use it effectively. What advice would you give us?
I believe that nowadays we need to ‘sacrifice’ a little of our time to learn how to use new technological tools. In reality, this is not a waste of time, but an investment: once we have become reasonably familiar with them, we can find what we need much more easily.
It is a bit like learning to read and write; we do not do it as an end in itself, but because it is the prerequisite for accessing knowledge, communicating and better understanding reality.
This applies to IT tools in general, but even more so to those linked to so-called Artificial Intelligence. There is no doubt that this is a technology destined to have a profound impact not only on the technical aspects of life, but also on our Christian lives. It is therefore necessary to learn how to use it, to understand its limitations and to verify the information we receive. Refusing to use it would, in a sense, mean remaining illiterate in a new world.
We, the readers of Cagliero11, are focused on the missionary dimension. Do you also regard your work and its fruits as a missionary activity?
The life of a Christian is, by its very nature, missionary, because one cannot hide the light one has received. The concept of mission has been reduced too much to the task of evangelising peoples who do not know Christ, but mission is nothing other than living the Christian life to the full, and it is most clearly called a mission when one fulfils a mandate that has been received.
Publishing articles that can be accessed from anywhere in the world, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, enables us to reach people and communities that would otherwise be difficult to encounter. In this sense, I think it could more appropriately be called missionary activity.
