By Fr Jacob Palaparambil for BIS Mumbai

The Don Bosco Youth Centre in Pune brought together 13 participants for an intensive seven-day course into what makes spiritual mentorship truly transformative. From September 13-19, 2025, the participants studied Saint John Bosco’s methods and traced the very relationships that shaped Don Bosco as a young person and discovered how those experiences ignited his passion for reaching poor and abandoned youngsters.

According to Fr Palla Velangani Joseph from INH, what made this course unique was its honest look at both sides of mentorship. The participants explored how young John Bosco himself needed guidance and support, then examined how those early experiences of being cared for fueled his later work with some of society’s most marginalised young.

The course was guided by Br Royston who dealt with the educational formation, while Fr Blany dove into the spiritual depths of mentoring relationships. Fr Valerian brought Don Bosco’s story to life through historical context and teaching principles, and Fr Joyston helped everyone wrestle with how these 19th-century insights translate into today’s youth ministry challenges.

The 13 participants came with their own stories of working with young people, turning coffee breaks and group discussions into laboratories where Don Bosco’s famous combination of reason, religion, and loving-kindness was tested against real-life experiences of accompanying the young.