EUROPE/ITALY - 40th anniversary of ELIS Centre: beating unemployment with good quality formation

Friday, 18 November 2005

Rome (Fides Service) - On Sunday 20 November in Rome in Via Sandro Sandri the Prelate of Opus Dei, Bishop Javier Echevarría will celebrate a Mass for the 40th anniversary of ELIS Centre (Education, Work, Instruction, Sport) for former pupils and teachers and families in the Tiburtino-Collatino district of Rome. ELIS was started at the request of Blessed John XXIII who wanted a technical college to take youths off the streets and help the enter the world of labour. The Pope decided to entrust this work to Josemaría Escrivà (now a Saint) founder of Opus Dei pioneer of the universal call to holiness through daily work. The Centre was opened during the pontificate of Paul VI who inaugurated it on 21 November 1965. At the time the Tiburtino-Collatino district was a frontier zone with problems, immigration, unemployment and marginalisation. Today its problems are drug abuse and maladjustment.
In these forty years ELIS has helped 10,000 people find work and demonstrated that unemployment is overcome with good formation. Today 100% of the Centre’s students find a job within a year: mechanics in various fields, goldsmiths and clockmakers, hotel staff, as well as graduates with master’s degree in multimedia and information technology. Students may write their thesis on projects commissioned by companies. It also has an incubator for new businesses, a centre of formation for formation staff, (350 schools send their staff to ELIS). Since 1992, the principle companies in contact with ELIS formed CONSEL consortium for higher formation which develops formation courses with ELIS.
The complex has a residence for a hundred students, a sports school and a library open to the public and it runs St John Baptist parish church at the service of the district. On 4 December the President of Lazio Region Piero Marrazzo will inaugurate the formation year. On 12 December Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the Pope’s vicar for the diocese of Rome will celebrate a Mass to mark the 40 years of St John Baptist parish.
Elis is also cooperation for development: the centre, a recognised NGO, promotes development in various countries with local interventions in China, Vietnam, Latin America and the Philippines. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 18/11/2005, righe 30, parole 412)


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