Salesians in Cambodia: The Shore Remains The Case Study of Don Bosco Kep

Abstract: This thesis explores how Salesian Institutes are related to religious peace-building in post-colonial and post-conflict Cambodia. It examines if and how the Catholic-Salesian multi-religious educational mission system is able to peacefully co-exist in a Buddhist Cambodian society, and collaborate with other minority religions present – Protestant, Muslim, and non-religious in promoting education for poor children and demoting inequalities. I conducted a 3-month mini ethnography and case study of Don Bosco Kep, one of the 5 Salesian communities in Cambodia, and analyzed the issue through Johan Galtung’s Negative and Positive Peace Framework with a special focus on the Positive Peace that overlaps with Salesian Preventive System that both seek to prevent conflict rather than end the already existing violence. I discovered that thanks to fulfilling 4 points of Galtung's Positive Peace, all the religious actors present at community missions were not only able to peacefully co-exist but also collaborate in poverty-alleviation which supported the advancement of the religious peace-building on a local community level in Kep, Cambodia.