Groot-Bijgaarden (Belgium). On 3 December 2025, some young people from the Don Bosco residency in Groot-Bijgaarden of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians of Sacred Heart Province (BEG) rolled up their sleeves and collaborated in planting 1,200 trees in the Dilbeek area.
The initiative was organized by the ‘Bûûmplanters’, a civic collective committed to sustainable ecosystem management that has planned planting actions almost weekly from November to March 2026. Citizens can report places where they believe new trees can be planted.
“Taking care of nature, sometimes means doing little things together. We will definitely go back to see how our trees grow,” said Sister Katelijn Vandekerckhove, head of the residency.
This type of initiative is part of the residency’s formation program, which aims to provide an integral education for girls and boys, based on Don Bosco’s pedagogical system.
Here, young people –just over 40 – experience their academic commitment in a decidedly family-like atmosphere, based on trust, the support of an educational team, in collaboration with families, respecting personal growth paths, and sharing daily life, with proposals for faith and commitment to others, but also for play and fun, in the Salesian style.
Another aspect of the internee’s formation proposal is the “pedagogy of hope”, based on the choice to educate to non-violence.
In this regard, in mid-Advent –which also marks the end of the 1st school term and exams – the FMAs, together with the internee staff, proposed to the young people to stop and form a ‘peace circle’, welcoming peace into their hearts and reflecting on what each person can do as a “peacemaker”:
“A peacemaker breaks the melancholy of these times. It opens the doors to faith to believe in small steps towards peacebuilding.”
The peace circle was created in solidarity with Pax Christi and all peacemakers in the world. Silence has fallen in the courtyard and we have allowed ourselves to be guided by the little light that it brings deep within ourselves and with God. Peace grows, and together the road to Christmas, the festival of Hope, opens.
On 9 December, Sister Anne De Cocker, FMA of the Community, went “to take” the light of the peace that had come from Bethlehem to the Begijnhof church in Brussels, and then spread it throughout the parish, the Community, and the residency and thus made the commitment as “peacebuilders” more visible and stronger.
