ON the 11th to the 14th October, myself and Patrick Kerridge attended a DBYN network meeting in Logrono, Spain. The meeting was hosted by the Spanish youth ministry team, Confe Don Bosco, who were also holding their 17th congress of the Salesian youth centres at the same time. Confe Don Bosco were concentrating on how recent levels of youth unemployment has affected Spanish volunteers. DBYN saw this as an opportunity to work alongside Confe and discuss how DBYN can tackle youth unemployment as a network and to discuss what each partner organisation are doing within their provinces to reduce unemployment.

Throughout the weekend the topics of conversation led to how similar, today's employment situation is to the time of Don Bosco. The present shift of hard industry to more service based employment is reminiscent of the shift from agricultural to industry in the 19th century and is causing similar problems. These "problems" are what led Don Bosco to start teaching such things carpentry, print works and tailoring. By doing this young people learnt the skills that would lead to employment. It made me think, what are we doing as a Youth Ministry to emanate this part of Salesian teaching?

The meeting was fantastic to share ideas and have the opportunity to discuss issues that are presently affecting young people in the UK and the rest of Europe. As a network we decided there is much more we could do to challenge youth unemployment and it is going to remain a priority of DBYN to concentrate on for the coming years.