Welcome News for Don Bosco Hall

The good news from Berkeley is that Jorge Santiago from Puerto Rico, who came for one semester, will now stay for two years!! At the same time, a letter came to Tom Prendiville from the Stanley Foundation with a 25,000. check for scholarships for Salesians from mission territories. It is a repeat of last year when with the help of Katie Calvert from the development office of the Western Dominican Province, helped us (ISS and DSPT) to apply for a grant. That work began way back in the Summer of 2005, and Katie succeeded in getting a grant for our students in 2006, and now again in 2007.

It seems that Katie is no longer working for the Western Dominicans. However, Tom Prendiville tells me that he will invite Gael Sullivan, as new director of the ISS, to speak with Michael Sweeney (DSPT president) and contact Katie to let her know that all her efforts have yielded good results.

And the timing is perfect: Jorge was refused a place in Chile but is accepted to DSPT: the grant can offset his tuition and living expenses so that his province is not going to lose and we get to keep him on board. Ah, if only DBH could hire Katie to do some grant writing proposals for our international students! This would take the edge out of things, economically … and that is a big part of our problem in bringing in Salesians for our programs.

Well, it is not the time to worry about this. It is time to rejoice with Jorge, with the DBH community, and to thank Katie and the Dominicans for all their efforts to help us to flourish. All this fits with my comments from yesterday. How important it is that we get the word out (PR, advertise, whatever…) about the ISS and our Salesian programs.