ALSO WE ARE IN PARTICULAR

Also among our members we have some with very high levels of income and many more from the neediest sectors of society, which are our beneficiaries. All our members work in harmony, showing understanding, love and comprehension among all. Many of our beneficiaries as we have seen come from very poor sectors of society and they also offer important contributions to the ADS even with great difficulty since they must work very hard to support their families.

Our ambitious pious works in the low income "barrios" can be a very heavy burden for the National Board and this is the main reason why the ADS demands that only members with strong values and capabilities, specially those that have available time, be elected to the Boards and that these members take special attention in their qualifications in order to better face the challenge of the management of social welfare activities.

We are also in the process of developing the Relay Generation and the Knights of Don Bosco which will comprise with the D.S. the great ADS Family and which will give strong support to our vast mission.

The spirit of friendship, fraternity, and companionship, comprehension and of apologizing if the need arises is considered a gift in the ADS Family. Our strenuous activity favors this, our style. There is no time for destructive criticism in the ADS, criticism that should be banished from our organization.

Our founder is always right when he says: "We had some friends, now we have hundreds and even thousands more, to which we are joined by many bonds."

The spirit of friendship, fraternity and the intuition of our Founder 30 years ago have designed a service enterprise, with solidarity, working for and with the community, with spirituality and charity, but totally inspired in the modern and forefront business enterprise. This has a purpose: to offer the best to our neediest beneficiaries, full of despair. The earnings of such an enterprise will always be insufficient and show a deficit in the desire for more abundant and better service. Improvisation and disorder are not admissible in our organization, which desires always to achieve efficiency and excellence, and to improve the quality of the services rendered to the beneficiaries.

Our mission is vast since it becomes one with the reality of each Center, always in action and in continuous creativity facing the most pressing needs of the area.

Besides in preference, we channel our manifold mission towards public health, the training for work, the rescue of young and older women, the education of children which serves to give guidance to their mothers, the stimulus given to the micro-business, the improvement of the aboriginal population and a well loved and tested work in the amelioration of the conditions of women prisoners. All of the above we perform in the "damasalesianamente spirit" of single or married women, with maternal instincts with a pedagogy and a method, which is the exclusive property of the "feminine genius", based in the love that a wife, a mother even a sweetheart is capable of giving; secrets that impel the D.S. to face any challenge or risk.

No Christian has the right to doubt the fact that the hour of the missionary and pastoral undertaking has arrived, has repeated our Founder, undertaking achieved through human and social promotion which opens a wide door for evangelization.

Team work and leadership are tended in the ADS with no restrain, in the same way as decentralization within a wise and judicious centralization that will protect the charisma, the indispensable governability and the established order, the mission of our Local, National and International Boards, our competent executive bodies. Good intentions are not enough, we must plan and we are forced to coordinate, implant policies, evaluate and question our ventures. Organization and management are required to reach success in any enterprise. Decision-making must be a joint task, even though the Ideario considers a pyramidal power structure its implementation is not in the ADS spirit, which is expressed better through accord and consensus. Our Founder has taught us that a member incapable of organization and teamwork, leaning towards personalism doesn’t have a true D.S. vocation.

The few and schematic ideas here stated, in the insufficient space allotted, could no be understood and explained if Formation is not available. Formation becomes an "obligation", the only obligation required by the ADS Ideario. Again our Founder has reiterated: -"Dama Salesiana that doesn’t take care of her Formation doesn’t remain for long in the Association."

In the same way the success, expansion and effectiveness of the ADS would not be understood without an ADS SPIRITUALITY, humanist, feminine, lay, Christian and Salesian that we can abridge thus:

A way of being and doing, open to the Spirit, in profound union with God and with reference to God in all endeavors. In the ADS predominates the spirituality of action, of the giving of the self, of sacrifice, of rendering service in the "damasalesianamente way".

Our spirituality is nourished by prayer, sacrifice, the Eucharist and the devotion to Mary, Help of Christians, First Dama Salesiana.

Spiritual Counselors are required in all Centers without exclusion. They should be if possible Salesian, even though if no S.D.B. or F.M.A. are available then we must ask other Provincials or the Bishop of the region for their help in finding the required Spiritual Counselors, which even though if they are not S.D.B. or F.M.A. must be welcomed as a sign of the Salesian Family spirit.

In this year 1999 we will hold our regulatory Local and National General Assemblies and our IV International Assembly. Among the matters to be considered is the modernization and actualization of our enterprise to the requirements and the future demands of the third millennium. A large number of the current leadership will conclude their term of office and new authorities will be elected according to our norm.

Our Salesianity is sung by the prestigious and eminent Salesian D. Joseph Aubry SDB with these words: "Inspired by a founder with a profound Salesian Spirit; born in the occasion of the erection of a National Temple of San John Bosco, they have chosen the name "Salesians". They proclaim in almost all the pages of their IDEARIO their admiration for Mama Margarita and Don Bosco. Thus they affirm: We were born as secular Salesians, we are guided spiritually by a Salesian and have always maintained open and forthright relations with the Inspectors SDB and FMA. This relations are carried with a mutual communion and the participation in specific pious works without which the D.S. can not exist." (La Pisana, 1-24-89)

We conclude in all humility and gratefulness to heaven, that to make the ADS Promise today is an unearned privilege, since we receive more than what we give… and because we are fulfilled as citizens, as Christians and as daughters of Don Bosco, who desires us to be: