The preventive educational system in the education of youth was written in 1877 by Ivan Bosco, a priest and Salesian who was born and died in Italy and lived in a period of political turmoil and industrialization that changed social relations and resulted with large numbers of boys from rural areas come to cities . Having begun to take care of the upbringing and education of the new boys, Ivan Bosco began to build a pedagogy whose basic principles are still relevant today in the educational work of his Salesian priests, assistant brothers and members of other branches of the Salesian family around the world. Salesians have been active in the Republic of Croatia since 1913, and in 1966 they were entrusted with the care of parish pastoral care in the Parish of Mary Help of Christians in Kman, where in the 1990s they started the Salesian Oratory Don Bosco - Kman and the construction of the John Paul II Youth Center. This paper seeks to examine and present the topicality of educational ideas of the preventive educational system of Ivan Bosco and explore how Salesians, volunteers and animators of the Salesian oratory Don Bosco - Kman educational work among children and youth of Split, assuming that their activities will have built-in educational ideas of Ivan Bosco. The paper consists of two parts. The first part is the result of theoretical processing of available literature in Croatian and English, which refers to Bosco's biography, historical circumstances in Italy and pedagogical events in the world in the 19th century on his educational activities and legacy, among which the most important are the Preventive System in youth education and oratory. The second part is an empirical study of the educational activities of the Salesian Oratory Don Bosco - Kman in Split, which confirms the relevance of Bosco's educational ideas and gives visible ways in which it is possible in the 21st century to raise children and youth on Bosco's foundations.