- Youth and education
The Salesian Technical School has been created to provide an adequate professional training especially to disadvantaged people in order to help them to find a proper job. It is open to students and teachers of whatever religious belief. Since 2001 the school has got a branch also in the handicrafts sector, the Artistic Centre, whose objectives are both providing professional training and maintaining the local cultural tradition. Under the STS there is also the International Nativity Museum, a collection of nearly 200 cribs from all over the world that has been established in Bethlehem as a universal message of peace.
The STS provides professional courses of 3 years in the sector of mechanics, electro-mechanics, electronics & radio-TV. Such courses award a final “tawjihi” diploma. Until the Second Intifada the STS, each year, granted the best graduated students a scholarship to help them to specialize in Italy for one year. Besides that, the STS also runs evening-courses that are attended by people who want to learn a job. These courses are auto motor, carpentry, mono-phase and three-phase electricity, PLC and turning.
The Artistic Centre, which is part of the school, provides different types of courses in olive wood, mother of pearl and ceramic. The Centre has got exchange programs with European artists and craftsmen who come to upgrade the local instructors and enhance the creativity of the students with new artistic ideas.