A farmer’s hope for his fields and family

November 20, 2017

By Evelyn Rupert

3 min read

Growing better in Honduras’ Dry Corridor.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/242996915

CHOLUTECA, Honduras — The rainy season has painted this area of southern Honduras a vibrant green, and farmers’ corn grows well above their heads.

But in a few months’ time, much of the landscape will be dried to a grim brown, and many families in this region will struggle to collect enough water.

The Dry Corridor stretches across the southern part of Central America, hitting its residents with extreme swings between rainy and dry seasons, exacerbated by climate change and weather phenomena El Niño and La Niña.

Juan Escobar has maintained a small cornfield and garden for more than 20 years in the largely rural municipality of Namasigue, outside of Choluteca city. He says he has been relatively lucky with his corn harvests – but every year brings a new challenge for his family.

How are we going to collect water? We don’t have water, it’s scarce here. From January on, we have very little potable water to drink. Living is very costly – we have to buy water from where there are wells just to bathe.
Juan Escobar

A helping hand for harvests

A project known by its Spanish acronym PROSASUR, part of a larger Dry Corridor Alliance, is stepping in to provide technical assistance, agricultural business plans and food security support to farmers like Juan to raise household income and improve nutrition.

The project is implemented by Creative Associates International in partnership with the Honduran government’s Strategic Investment Office, Invest-H. It is funded by the World Bank through the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program.

With help from the project, Juan built a water harvesting system that will allow him to collect and store rainwater to irrigate his crops throughout the dry season – something he’s never done before.

This winter had us scared, we lost a lot of water. But now with the harvesting of water we will no longer have losses because we will now have enough water for that. That is what we want.
Juan Escobar

PROSASUR assisted Juan in building a water harvesting and irrigation system similar to this one, but with a large bag for water instead of a tank. Juan has also been introduced to new fertilizer techniques – the project helped him build a simple composting system to create biofuel, which will benefit his fields and gardens with low-cost, abundant and natural fertilizers.

With new seeds and better farming techniques, Juan’s harvests and garden will be heartier and more productive, allowing him to feed his family and produce more income from selling his produce.

(Left) Juan and Juana Pineda (Right) Rony Alvarez with Juan Pineda.

There is nothing that I like more than to plant in the earth, because my dad told me. ‘Look, if you keep planting you will have everything each day.
Juan Escobar

Passing knowledge to neighbors

Juan and his family were selected to be early beneficiaries of the project in part because of his position as a leader within his community.

The project team believes that as he learns and implements new techniques, he will pass that knowledge on to his neighbors so the community can benefit from stronger harvests and more income.

The leadership that he already has, or the technology that we are going to give as a project, won’t be transferred to others through the project technicians, but through the farmers. And people understand much better farmer to farmer than if a technician teaches them something.
Edgardo Varela, PROSASUR Agriculture Component Coordinator

Juan says that he’s hopeful about the help the project is bringing and the impact it will have on his harvest – and he’s willing to do his share of the work to make it successful.

First thanks to God, who has offered to help us. That is what we’re looking for, because as a farmer there are so many things you lack.
Juan Andres Escobar

Photos and video by Skip Brown

Honduras – Dry Corridor Alliance

Program

2 min read

When the El Niño weather phenomenon swept through the Pacific in 2015 and 2016, it hit large expanses of Central America with the most severe drought in decades, exacerbating the already precarious situation across Honduras’s “Dry Corridor,” a climate-fragile and impoverished stretch of land spanning Central America’s Pacific Coast.

The five-year Honduras Livelihoods and Food and Nutrition Security in the Dry Corridor (ACS-GAFSP) project aimed to enhance human capital and productive capacity and to diversify livelihoods and build resilience of 6,000 poor and extreme poor families in 12 municipalities in the eastern Dry Corridor departments of Choluteca and El Paraíso.

Creative Associates International implemented the project in partnership with INVEST-Honduras.

The project was funded by the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program through the World Bank. It was part of the larger Alliance for the Dry Corridor, which aimed to lift 50,000 families out of extreme poverty and reduce under-nutrition by 20 percent in target communities.

A major focus of the project centered on food production and income generation, seeking to increase families’ income and access to quality, nutritious foods. ACS-GASFP also included water, sanitation and health interventions in selected households whose families experience extreme poverty conditions.

The project helped families craft business and food security plans and share best agricultural practices, including irrigation, fertilization and production diversification. These efforts allowed participants to reach a higher level of food and agricultural production so that they could emerge from subsistence agriculture and diversify production with high-value crops like vegetables and perennials.

Working with the private sector, the project strengthened value chains and create opportunities for families to sell their products, including through the establishment of community markets.

In addition, the Dry Corridor project reached thousands of households with nutritional and hygiene education, with a focus on pregnant women and children under five years of age.

The project helped families adopt healthy hygiene practices and diets – with help from expanded food production – through communication campaigns, outreach centers and community networks, and by strengthening existing programs and services.

The project raised awareness about malnutrition and its consequences and educate families, health workers and community leaders on how to prevent chronic malnutrition.

The creation of 275 school gardens created a nutritious and diverse food source for the community, taught children about growing and consuming high-value foods and hygiene, and provided children with a snack during the school day.

In addition, project-supported updates to water filtration systems, kitchen appliances, and bathrooms reduced the risk of chronic illness, which could counteract any benefits of improved nutrition.

Advances in food production and nutrition helped lay the groundwork for continued growth in this rural area and improved livelihoods for thousands of people.

A second chance for Honduran youth in the juvenile justice system

July 3, 2017

By Gustavo Ochoa and Jillian Slutzker

5 min read

Rebeca, a grandmother in her early 60s, lives in Nueva España—a neighborhood with a sweeping view of the capital. Despite the panoramic view of the metropolis, this section of the city is better known for its poverty, violence and arrest records.

Rebeca weeps as she describes the two months that her 17-year old grandson Fernando spent in Jalteva, a detention center south of the city.

“Fernando had been using drugs for some time, and had turned abusive toward me and his mother until one night we were forced to call the police,” she says.

The incident ended in juvenile court where her grandson was charged with assault and sentenced to jail. “We did not imagine this would be the outcome,” she recounts through tears.

Rebeca didn’t want her grandson to be sent away and punished—she wanted him to get the help he needed to change.

This help would come to Fernando two months later, when he was released from the detention center on good behavior and allowed to return home through a measure known as “conditional release” that is overseen by the juvenile court system, which remands youth like Fernando to support services.

Among the support services to connect with Fernando was a unique violence prevention program called Proponte Más. Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and implemented by Creative Associates International, Proponte Más works closely with the Institute for the Care of Child Offenders, the Ministry of Development, the National University, the Honduran Association of Psychologists and the Honduran Judicial System to strengthen alternative justice measures, like Fernando’s court-ordered program.

In addition, to reach youth before they go down the path of committing violence, Proponte Más applies an evidence-based risk assessment called the Youth Service Eligibility Tool to identify youth most at risk of joining gangs. Over the course of a year, trained family counselors work with these families to change the family dynamics and lower the youth’s risk factors for gang joining.

Training counselors to help youth succeed after detention

As part of his court-ordered programming, Fernando was linked to Casa Alianza Honduras, an agency with an active counseling program for youth in the juvenile justice system. As a partner organization and grantee of Proponte Más, Casa Alianza receives financial and technical support from the project, including trainings for staff in secondary violence prevention assessments and family counseling intervention.

To date, 28 young people given alternative measures through the courts are receiving prevention services from Casa Alianza as part of the referral process established by Proponte Más. This process integrates joint work between the public sector and civil society organizations.

At Casa Alianza, each counselor works with “involuntary” youth—or youth like Fernando referred through the court system—ages 12 to 18 who have been convicted of crimes ranging from drug trafficking to physical assault.

With the tools and approaches they learn through the Proponte Más trainings, the counselors can better serve the young people they work with and help bolster their chances of successful reintegration. It is tough work, but work in which Casa Alianza counselors take great pride.

“These young people are facing an enormous social stigma,” says Esdras Medina, one of the counselors who received trainings through Proponte Más. “Their opportunities for rehabilitation are hampered because the people surrounding them believe them to be dangerous because they have been sentenced with special measures. We are changing this.”

Making rehabilitation and reintegration a priority

Together, Proponte Más and Casa Alianza are working to improve the ability of state-run institutions to work with youth who have been in the juvenile justice system and their families. Rather than perpetuate a punitive response that criminalizes youth offenders, Proponte Más aims to reorient that state’s approach toward rehabilitation and reintegration.

“I think Honduras looks at the possibilities through Proponte Más interventions—through both our interventions with grants on a community level but also in helping to think about new programs that receive kids who have alternative sentencing and help them to reintegrate,” says Robyn Braverman, Chief of Party for the project. “Do I believe that reintegration is possible? Absolutely. I think everybody deserves a second chance, but especially kids.”

The project is working to facilitate this reintegration in several ways. For example, 46 percent of the 28 youth referred to Casa Alianza through Proponte Más were not enrolled in school when they began working with the center. Casa Alianza and Proponte Más have worked to change that: to date, 82 percent of these young people are now enrolled in the formal education system.

In addition to working with these 28 youth, the project is currently assessing youth in seven Honduran juvenile detention facilities using the Youth Service Eligibility Tool to empirically measure their levels of risk for violence and then determine appropriate courses of intervention or treatment to reduce that risk. Simply because a youth is in the system does not mean h/she is at the highest level of risk, explains Braverman. The data will help to inform national policy on juvenile justice.

The state’s support for this type of alternative sentencing based on counseling and support services for youth and families is a welcome development for the country, according to Claudia Sierra, Juvenile Justice Specialist for Proponte Más.

“These alternative programs are important in Honduras because they act as operative arms of the state, making the rehabilitation and reinsertion processes more effective. We know, based on studies, that locking youth up is detrimental to their rehabilitation,” she says.

Fernando’s next steps

For Fernando, the partnership between Proponte Más and Casa Alianza has helped him chart a better trajectory for his and his family’s future.

“Like Proponte Más, Casa Alianza strives to work not only with the youth, but with their families to develop a life plan with clear goals and objectives and a guide to follow them,” explains Rafael Medina, Fernando’s counselor at Casa Alianza.

When Fernando expressed his interest in computers and mechanics, Casa Alianza helped him enroll in a computer course, for example. He and his family also regularly attend activities at the center, learning skills ranging from English to parenting. He also recently participated in Proponte Más-sponsored seminar called “New Masculinities,” which helps young people identify and reduce certain unhealthy and aggressive behaviors associated with “machismo.”

“We have to periodically report Fernando’s advances to the judge,” says Rafael, “I know that his progress will not go unnoticed.”

Fernando is saving money to buy a guitar and will soon celebrate his successful completion of a technology course he started in December.

His grandmother Rebeca says that spite of the difficulties that they have faced, she is grateful for the positive changes in her grandson and hopes these types of rehabilitation opportunities will be accessible to more young people who, like Fernando, make a mistake or go down the wrong path.

“We criticize the errors and the defects of the young people, but there is no one to lend a hand, lift them up and tell them what they can do,” she says.

Turning to her grandson she tells him, “I feel happy because I have seen that you have changed a lot and thank God and the place where you were, you had the opportunity to meet good-hearted people who treated you well.”

With editing by Dan Alder

HONDURAS: Evidence, family and an innovative approach to reducing youth risk

July 3, 2017

2 min read

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

HONDURAS:

Evidence, family and an innovative approach to reducing youth risk

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]In Honduran communities with alarming levels of crime and violence, a small number of youth are most at risk of falling into the gangs that fuel conflict in their neighborhoods. The USAID Proponte Más project’s evidence-based approach identifies these youth and works through specially trained family counselors to put them on a more peaceful and promising path. Meet the families and youth that are building resilience, reducing risk and envisioning a brighter future.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]

IN HONDURAS, STRONG FAMILIES BUILD SAFER COMMUNITIES

Teenage cousins Steven and Yuvini were at high risk for joining a gang, but through a unique family-based violence prevention program, the boys and their family are working together to lower those risk factors for violence and build resilience.

Read full story & Watch video[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]

NEW PROGRAM STEERS MINORITY YOUTH AWAY FROM VIOLENCE

Despite the relative isolation of the Garifuna community, there are warning signs that Garifuna youth are not immune to the risk of becoming involved in gangs. Meet a family working to draw on traditional strengths to reduce their sons’ risk.

Read full story & Watch video[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]

A SECOND CHANCE FOR HONDURAN YOUTH IN THE JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM

After being released from juvenile detention, Fernando is getting the support he needs to bolster his chances of successful reintegration. See how Proponte Más is helping to make rehabilitation a priority for the state and a reality for youth and families.

Read full story[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/12″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_widget_sidebar sidebar_id=”sidebar-primary”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

New program steers minority youth away from violence

July 3, 2017

By Evelyn Rupert and Jillian Slutzker

5 min read

Wilson and Irvin Guity’s father Carlos has just returned home to the coastal Honduran town of Corozal for a visit from Panama, where he spends long stretches of time working construction.

While the boys’ father migrates for work, their mother Ronna Ballesteros picks up housekeeping jobs in order to provide for her sons and their two younger sisters.

“I shouldn’t have left, but I had to,” Carlos says. “Here, there aren’t opportunities.”

Despite the distance, the family is now growing closer – and, in the process, reducing Wilson and Irvin’s chances of becoming involved in gangs.

The Guity family is Garifuna – a minority group of Afro-Caribbean descent. Garifuna communities dot the northern coast of Honduras, including in Corozal, just outside the large city of La Ceiba.

The Garifuna and other indigenous groups have long been isolated from mainstream Honduran society by race, history and culture, and face discrimination and inequality in relation to land, justice and basic social services.

In addition, they are affected by the same challenges playing out across the country: gang violence, job scarcity, migration.

In Corozal and elsewhere, these factors are straining family life and leaving youth at a high risk of joining gangs.

Based on an evaluation of nine risk factors at a family, peer and individual level, brothers Wilson, 11, and Irvin, 13, both fell into this high risk category and are participating in a crime and violence prevention project called Proponte Más.

Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and implemented by Creative Associates International, the project is aimed at preventing the most at-risk youth from joining gangs through family-based counseling model.

Proponte Más’ approach centers on strengthening high-risk youth’s family support system – the best asset for preventing young people from falling into gangs. More than 50 counselors have been trained to work closely with families in five of Honduras’ most violent cities, including La Ceiba, over the course of a year. The goal is to alter risky behavior and strengthen relationships that lower risk factors and build resilience to the lure of gangs.

Before the program, her sons often skipped school, fought with their siblings and classmates, and were disrespectful toward her and other adults, says the boys’ mother Ronna.

“They had the perception that because their dad was abroad, and their mom didn’t spend time at home, it was because they didn’t love them,” counselor Diana Flores says of Wilson and Irvin. “We worked out a strategy – we have to, in some way, see how we can try to create a little bit of closeness with mom and dad.”

Counselors like Flores work to help youth identify themselves first as a member of their family. Strong family unity makes a young person less likely to seek out that sense of belonging from a gang, she explains.

To date, the approach has had success. After just six months of intervention, all 445 youth in the program showed a reduction is all nine risk factors for violence. Nearly 3 out of 4 youth lowered their risk factors to less than four out of nine, which places them below the threshold for “at risk.”

Community on the precipice

Honduras has one of the highest murder rates in the world, recently estimated to be about 60 homicides per 100,000 residents. Against this backdrop, crime and violence rates within the Garifuna community are relatively low.

Proponte Más relies on an empirical assessment to identify youth who are at the highest risk of engaging in gang activity, through a method known as the Youth Service Eligibility Tool. The tool evaluates youth across nine risk factors and looks for more than 100 behavioral indicators. School staff, coaches and other community leaders can refer youth for YSET evaluation.

Despite the relative isolation and calm of the Garifuna community, there are warning signs that Garifuna youth are not immune to the risk of becoming involved in gangs.

Ronna says a teacher first recommended Irvin for the program – since she was also having trouble with Wilson, Ronna asked if he could participate as well.

Using the YSET assessment, both were determined to be at a high risk, along with other young people in the Garifuna community.

Tesla Quevedo, Proponte Más Regional Director for La Ceiba and Tela, says that because the Garifuna have been viewed as a peaceful community, they have not been a priority for violence prevention programs. But the results of the risk assessment called for action. In fact, Proponte Más was given special permission to work in these specific Garifuna communities a pilot.

“We are not alien to the structural and behavioral changes that our country is suffering. In this sense, the Garifuna population is also being affected by situations that lead their young people, their men, their women to carry out acts of vandalism, criminal acts, and that concern us,” says Quevedo.

The work of Proponte Más in the Garifuna community is part of a pilot program, working on violence prevention in communities that do not yet have high homicide rates but nonetheless exhibit risk factors for violence among their youth.

“We do not want to wait to be part of the national statistics, to appear on the front pages of the newspapers, for attention to be given to this problem,” Quevedo says.

“So this is the moment to be able to intervene, to be able to work. If we are talking about prevention, then we should prevent – because to do it later, to do it when we already have deaths every day, that won’t be prevention.”

Proponte Más is the first program of its kind to be established in the Honduran Garifuna community.

Focusing on families

Quevedo says that Proponte Más’ family-focused approach is fitting for the Garifuna.

“The other component that Proponte Más deals with and which really ties in with the Garifuna population is working with other generations and focusing on traditions, on the recuperation of customs,” she says. “The Garifuna community is a community very rich in culture, very rich in rituals, in traditions. And all of these traditions center on the family, just like Proponte Más does.”

Counselors work to strengthen family bonds, find solutions to behavioral problems and improve communication.

Carolina Guity, a longtime teacher in the area, says she has seen major improvements in the students referred to the program.

“The importance of these programs is that if you transform a family, you become a community. And you can transform a country, which is where we want to go,” she says.

“Currently the family is increasingly broken, and if the family changes, we will be in a much better country and the young people will become better parents, and we will obviously transform our community and our country as well.”

Both Wilson and Irvin say they have an improved outlook on school and life at home since working with Proponte Más. And their parents have noticed the difference.

“I spent a lot of time fighting with them so they would help me do things. But now, thank God, with the project it changed a lot,” Ronna says. “Now they do laundry without me saying anything, they even cook, wash dishes, make the bed for me – even my bed where I sleep, they make it. They have changed a lot.”

With reporting by Gustavo Ochoa and Jillian Slutzker in Honduras.

Honduras: Garifuna Families Use Culture to Prevent Violence

July 3, 2017

1 min read

Despite the relative isolation and calm of the Garifuna community, there are warning signs that Garifuna youth are not immune to the risk of becoming involved in gangs—a problem across much of the country. Meet the Guity family and see how a unique violence prevention program is drawing on traditional cultural strengths to support the family’s two sons in reducing their risk for violence.

In Honduras, strong families build safer communities

June 28, 2017

By Gustavo Ochoa and Evelyn Rupert

7 min read

Teenage cousins Steven and Yuvini were at high risk for joining a gang, measured through an evidence-based risk assessment. But through a unique family-based violence prevention program called Proponte Más, the boys and their family are working together to lower those risk factors for violence and build resilience.

CHOTEPE, Honduras – Gathered around a table with his grandparents and cousins, 15-year-old Steven is drawing a family tree with colored markers. Family members chime in, helping him add new branches of relatives as they recount family stories.

“We do the family tree, so the branches are aunts and uncles or parents. We are the roots, and the trunk is the whole family,” says Steven, who lives with extended family outside of San Pedro Sula.

“Being together, talking, is what I like most about the family, because they tell us good stories,” he adds.

The family tree, or genogram, is one tool that can help young people learn about their own roots – those that tie them to their families and communities and can be the start of a support system that lowers their risk of becoming involved in gangs and violence.

The tool is part of a family-based violence prevention program called Proponte Más, operating in five of Honduras’ most violent cities. Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and implemented by Creative Associates International, the program has trained 50 counselors to work directly with families of youth who are most likely to join gangs.

The program relies on an empirical assessment to identify youth who are at the highest risk of joining gangs, through a method known as the Youth Service Eligibility Tool. The tool evaluates youth on a series of nine risk factors at a family, peer and individual level.

Steven and his 16-year-old cousin Yuvini were determined to be at high risk, and have been participating in the program for several months.

Proponte Más’ family-based approach to working with these highest-risk youth – in a category known as “secondary violence prevention” – views a strong family support system as essential in preventing youth from getting drawn into the gangs that have turned communities into conflict zones.

Counselors spend a year working closely with youth and their families to change behaviors and relationships in a way that helps lower the youths’ risk factors for violence.

Miguel Leon, Proponte Más Regional Director in San Pedro Sula, says the family tree is a way to connect youth, and their relatives, to multiple generations. The counselors use the genogram as a jumping-off point, a way to assess the family situation while also getting youth interested in the story of their family.

“We’re trying to get the youth to, via his or her understanding of his or her family history, be able to separate himself or herself from whatever negative elements are attracting him within his or her community,” Leon says.

“We’re really betting on the family’s capability to transform itself and be the root or catalyst for changing the lives of many young people that have been dealing with a really difficult context here in Honduras,” he says.

The approach is working. After just six months of family intervention, each of the 445 youth who, like Steven and Yuvini, exhibited risk factors at a secondary level and have been participating in family-based counseling, displayed a reduction in all nine risk factor categories.

Remarkably, nearly three out of four youth lowered their risk factors to less than four altogether, which places them below the threshold for “at risk.”

Counseling in conflict zones

Proponte Más is operating in five municipalities with high rates of crime and violence: Tegucigalpa; San Pedro Sula; Choloma; Tela; and La Ceiba.

Steven and Yuvini live with their grandparents in the community of Chotepe outside of San Pedro Sula. Chotepe is part of Chamelecón, a suburb of San Pedro Sula plagued by violence caused by rival gangs. The sugarcane fields in Chamelecón are notorious as a dumping ground for bodies.

Fanny Romero, a counselor who works with Steven and Yuvini’s family, recalls feeling afraid the first time she visited. Their home sits off a road that serves as a dividing line between two rival gangs.

“It’s a part of the history surrounding Chamelecón,” she says. “Unfortunately, it’s a negative part, but we have to rescue the positive. And the positive part is the families we work with, their strength. It is, more than anything, trying to rescue these young people from this situation.”

Honduras has one of the highest murder rates in the world, recently estimated to be about 60 homicides per 100,000 residents. San Pedro Sula has consistently been ranked as one of the world’s most dangerous cities.

But when Romero visits weekly, it is in a festive atmosphere surrounded by a crowd of relatives.

“The program has helped us be more united, to get to know each other more, to be better people. And thanks to the counselor, Fanny, because she is already part of our family as well and we love her very much,” says Steven’s mother, Vanessa.

Romero also works with another set of cousins in Chotepe, Danilo and Esteban, who were referred to Proponte Más by their school. The boys, along with several other extended family members, live with their grandparents, who were worried about them getting sucked into gang life. Romero says helping youth to identify first as members of their family, differentiating themselves from area gangs, is key.

“When families are more united, young people are less likely to identify with other organized groups outside their home,” she says.

Counselors work with families to come up with new solutions to behavioral problems, such as defined tasks, increased supervision and accountability.

On a Tuesday visit from Romero, Danilo and Esteban joked and laughed and showed off their completed chore worksheets and happy face stickers, evidence that they asked permission before leaving the house. Their own colorful family tree poster was on display.

“I do my assignments now. I listen to my teachers,” Esteban says. “Before, not so much. I was kind of disobedient.”

Bringing scattered families together

Across Honduras, violence and instability have separated many families.

The gang violence and its consequences drive many residents to flee for the United States, or send their children alone on the dangerous journey. Many Hondurans also migrate in search of better economic opportunities outside the country.

Esteban’s grandmother Margarita says his mother wanted him to travel with a smuggler to join her in the U.S.

“I told her, ‘You can’t just take him like that,’” she says. “I don’t want my boys making such an ugly trip. ‘He’s just a boy and I have raised him. It’s cost me. I know I’ve had a hard time with him,’ I told her, ‘but I am not going to give him to some stranger to take him up there.'”

Robyn Braverman, Proponte Más Chief of Party, says violence, like migration, is a catalyst for disrupting family life and breaking down lines of communication.

“Oftentimes violence destroys families; it forces some families to flee and some families to stay. And it divides families as well,” she says.

“Violence can manifest itself in different ways in the families through just the lack of communication, through a rupture in relationships in general, through a lack of opportunities, which manifests itself in lots of frustration.”

One goal of Proponte Más counselors is to reconnect youth with their family members, even those that live elsewhere, and make everyone feel more comfortable communicating openly.

For Steven, Yuvini and their family, the program has helped renew lines of communication, a key step in building stronger family ties that help reduce risk factors for violence.

“They have already changed a lot. They have changed in the sense that they already have more freedom to talk with us. They tell us about their problems, they have changed a lot in their behavior,” says Vanessa, Steven’s mother.

And counselors focus not just on altering the adolescents’ communication, but also that of the parents and other relatives.

“My behavior I think it has changed a lot because of this because I have always been like that, a little further away from them. Then with this, it has already given me more confidence to be with them, to talk to them,” Vanessa says.

Proponte Más counselors work to educate the entire family about the program and its goals, even relatives who do not live in the same household. In Steven and Yuvini’s case, Romero says they are working on setting up Skype calls with Steven’s father, who lives in the U.S., and keeping relatives updated on the boys’ progress by sending photos.

“They involve everyone equally, the great aunts and uncles primarily,” Romero says. “And they are one of the strongest families. They have roots that are growing stronger, so that some burst of air doesn’t make them collapse as a family.”

With reporting by Gustavo Ochoa and Jillian Slutzker from Honduras.

Honduras: Strong Families Build Safer Communities

June 28, 2017

1 min read

Contagion Effect: Treating gang violence like a public health epidemic

May 16, 2017

By Sara Danish

4 min read

Did you know that this city’s war on gangs in the 1970s resulted in an increase in gangs and gang activity?

This decades-long public investment in a suppressive, law-and-order model led to increased incarcerations, as well as homicides and other violent crime. The violence was contagious, serving as the backdrop for the infamous 1991 Rodney King beating by members of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). The violence and discrimination went unabated until the early 2000s.

Thanks to tireless efforts of civil rights and community activists like Connie Rice and some city officials’ willingness to reflect on their public policy failings, Los Angeles slowly pivoted from declaring war on its people to declaring war on violence.

The shift began to look at gang violence though a public health lens, equating it to an epidemic. And much like health professionals tackle a quickly spreading disease, efforts began to address the factors that spark and sustain gang violence.

City officials worked to address deep racism within the LAPD and set up initiatives like the Gang Reduction and Youth Development Office in 2007, which promoted community activities in public parks and family counseling interventions for youth most at risk of joining gangs.

As a result, Los Angeles has experienced dramatic reductions in violence while helping to build youth, family and community resilience. Gang Reduction and Youth Development Office is so effective that some elements are being adapted and exported to other cities struggling to reduce violence, both in the United States and abroad. Creative Associates International’s Proponte Más violence prevention program in Honduras is one such example.

I recently attended the 2017 Los Angeles Gang Prevention and Intervention Conference, where outreach workers, faith-based groups and international implementers, like Creative, illustrated the power of treating violence with a public health approach.

A public health approach begins with the premise that violence is an illness that can be treated through prevention, intervention and recovery. The Urban Peace Institute, which trains gang interventionists, stressed that treatment across these three phases requires self-reflection, compassion and empathy. It requires blending street science with social science.

Experts also said we must focus on vulnerable people and pay attention to behaviors that can signal a risk of joining gangs. And our efforts must reach into all major institutions within a community – we need to be in the streets, schools, hospitals and prisons to facilitate a sense of youth belonging and reduce risk.

Taking violence prevention to the streets

Chicago, a member of the National Network for Safe Communities, introduced a partnership between law enforcement and community outreach workers, known as Custom Notifications, to make door-to-door visits to youth involved in gang activity.

The Chicago Violence Reduction Strategy team processes more than 1,000 of these notifications each year. It started with parents asking for a professional to intervene in the aftermath of a gang shooting, fearing that their child would engage in retaliatory violence.

The calls were successful because a credible, visible community member facilitated discussion alongside law enforcement.

Chicago Violence Reduction Strategy is helping reduce repeat offenses. It also generates referrals for what Christopher Malette of Chicago Violence Reduction Strategy calls “the big small stuff,” such as clothes for an interview, a driver’s license or tattoo removal which all help youth to find alternatives to gang activity.

Working within the school system

After-school sports and activities are helpful, but alone are not enough to stop the most at-risk youth from joining gangs. Mentoring and other one-on-one programs are making a difference to rectify the school-to-prison pipeline that resulted from zero-tolerance disciplinary policy.

However, school staff need better training on detecting and diagnosing behavior problems. Research in the United States and United Kingdom shows that many gang-involved youth have experienced trauma, such as childhood neglect, exposure to persistent violence and sexual abuse.

Acting out in class, often treated as a disciplinary problem or associated with other issues like attention deficit disorder, can be a sign of posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

Working with teachers to identify and provide support to at-risk students can be an effective step to reducing a young person’s chances of joining a gang.

Partnering with hospitals

The Southern California Crossroads Trauma Recovery Center is a powerful partnership between medical professionals, gang outreach workers and researchers to help gang members following hospital discharge. Crossroads targets “repeat customers” to the emergency room or youth with repeat exposure to gang violence.

It helps clients develop coping mechanisms, skills needed for maintaining inter-personal relationships, and provides ongoing counseling and job placement.

Reaching into prisons

Incarcerated youth exhibit higher levels of PTSD, suggesting that we need more healthcare professionals in detention centers. Support for recovery for incarcerated gang members takes many forms.

Working out of California, 2^nd Call uses restorative justice techniques with prison inmates to help them reflect on their anger and express their emotions over an intense weeks-long healing exercise. Its work is helping ex-convicts give and receive compassion, and return as healthy members of their communities, contributing to declines in gang violence and recidivism rates.

Final thoughts

My second time attending the Gang Prevention and Intervention Conference showed me that we cannot overstate the importance of treating violence as a public health challenge. We need to further advocate for trauma-informed interventions across settings, from the streets to schools.

And while it’s important for outreach workers and law enforcement to “stay in their lanes,” we must work to establish positive relationships between communities and law enforcement – this builds trust and helps to diffuse tensions before they escalate to violence.

Among fellow practitioners, we need to monitor and rigorously evaluate interventions and impact and the cross-agency mechanisms like the Chicago Violence Reduction Strategy Office that sustain necessary political and institutional support.

Anything worth doing is worth measuring. And the inspiring strength of my colleagues is drawn from measuring the impact of their interventions, which are spreading hope. Thankfully, that’s contagious too.

Inside a family-based approach to reach youth most at risk of committing violence

April 28, 2017

By Jillian Slutzker

9 min read

In five of Honduras’ highest crime municipalities, family counselors are making in-roads working with 800 families with members between ages 8 to 17 at the highest risk of participating in violence.

Operating in Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, Choloma, La Ceiba and Tela, the innovative violence prevention project called Proponte Más has trained counselors to use an evidence-based risk assessment to identify youth most at risk of joining gangs. Over the course of a year, they work in close partnership their families to change the family dynamics and lower the risk factors for gang joining.

Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and implemented by Creative Associates International, Proponte Más also provides targeted support to first-time or nonviolent juvenile offenders to help improve their chances of reintegration after a period of incarceration or detention.

Proponte Más has generated impressive quantitative results in reductions in risk factors and associated behaviors with the population at a secondary level of risk—those at the highest risk of commit violence.

For example, behaviors such as carrying concealed weapons, drug trafficking or group fights with gangs, among others, are connected to a risk factor known as “Delinquency Associated with Substance Abuse.”

After just six months of family intervention, youth in the program showed significant declines in this risk factors: An average reduction of 30.2 percent in Tegucigalpa; 34.4 percent in La Ceiba; 30.8 percent in Tela; 33.3 percent in San Pedro Sula; and 38.7 percent in Choloma. Beyond the statistics, the risk reductions also contributed to improvements in safety for the families.

Robyn Braverman, Chief of Party for the project, and Guillermo Cespedes, Deputy Chief of Party, help to explain the context, process and results to date of this family-centered, evidence-based approach to reaching the most vulnerable youth and stemming violence.

How does violence, either within the family or in the neighborhood, affect family life?

Robyn Braverman: Violence has affected family life in Honduras perhaps as much as migration has affected family life. However, what has surprised us in our work with Proponte Más, is the resilience and willingness of families that live in these high risk communities to form a partnership with us with the goal of keeping their children safe.

What Proponte Más has found is that as we go in to work with families—and I want to emphasize the fact that we intervene with families and change the choreography in the dance of families—we found is that even our perception of family was different. Whereas we thought that perhaps most of the families of youth we’d be working with are fractured or divided already, we find that over 50 percent of the youth at a secondary level and tertiary level of risk live in a household that have a father or male paternal figure and a mother or male maternal figure.

More importantly 65.5 percent of those youth report that they receive emotional support and acceptance, while 88.5 percent report that they receive it from the maternal figure.

In Proponte Más, we see this as an asset to build on, and families have been responding and fighting this battle and really making a valiant attempt to rescue what is good in the family and to take on the role of protector and advocate for the rest of their children and the rest of their family. What we see overall is that our work should emphasize what assets the family has that we can build on, as opposed to focusing on what is missing!

How does violence in the neighborhood or a societal perception or fear of youth as potential gang members affect how youth see themselves?

Robyn Braverman: I think there is a faulty narrative that paints youth in Honduras exclusively through the lens of criminality. One of the things that we’re trying to do is change that perception of youth through the use of data, even when it relates to those youth that have been incarcerated and many sectors of society has given up on them.

Recently we trained Honduran government partners on the process of the Youth Service Eligibility Tool (or YSET) diagnostic, and proceeded to assess 90 percent (433) of the youth population incarcerated in juvenile detention facilities. Much to our surprise 35 percent were confirmed to be at a primary level of risk, which merits at least questioning if this is the best rehabilitation alternative for these youth.

What do we mean when we say “at-risk youth”?

Guillermo Cespedes: The definition of “at-risk youth” until recently was very vague and general and unintendedly has fueled the assumption that all young people living in communities with high levels of violence, gang presence and poverty are at the same level of risk. This thinking led to the applications of the same violence prevention “medicine” applied all youth in high risk communities.

We now know that interventions are most effective when they are targeted to specific risk levels. Based on a data sample of 2,189 youth from the most violent communities in Honduras 1,483, or 68 percent of them, have tested at a primary level of risk—meaning that at least scientifically they are not at risk of joining gangs. It also means that they can be kept safe through primary prevention programs such as the Outreach Centers developed by Creative Associates International.

Of this population, 533 or 24 percent tested at a secondary level of risk—meaning they are scientifically at risk of joining gangs and can be effectively deterred by intervening at a family system’s level. After six months of family interventions we find that 73.5 percent of the youth at a secondary level have reduced their risk factors to the less serious primary level.

As far as those that may have a more serious involvement with gangs, we found that only 8 percent, or 173 youth, were assessed at a tertiary level.

In other words, the majority of youth in this age group even in the most violent communities of Honduras are not gang members as some narratives appear to suggest. Creative is leading the efforts in advocating for the right level of intervention based on the level of risk of each individual.

What are some of the strategies that family counselors are using to get to those risky behaviors and interrupt them?

Guillermo Cespedes: The counselors’ main goal is to get everybody in the family organized around implementing new solutions to a particular behavior. That behavior might be that this kid goes out of the house, he meets with his friends, he uses drugs, and as a result, he may potentially go out and commit crimes.

We can’t go into the streets with him or with her, but we can certainly work with the family to try to figure out how to monitor him differently. Every counselor is working with all the members of the family around that, basic monitoring.

We work with families because for the most part, they are some of the most influential persons around the young person and can serve as both motivators and holders of accountability.

Our focus with families at two levels: 1) We work with families to identify additional sources of support and pride across generations through the use of asset-based multi-generational mapping, referred to as genograms. This means literally or symbolically including multiple generations in the process of the work. 2) The second level focusses on those members that live together and or have daily contact, and in that area we focus on helping families design more effective problem solving strategies.

What are some of the assets that counselors find already existing that can be strengthened?

Guillermo Cespedes: Robyn already highlighted some of the assets related to the relationship with mothers and fathers.

We also find that we tend to underestimate the level of coping and resiliency that families have to develop to survive in these communities. And as a parent, to me, I see it as heroic, some of the things that these families can sustain. There’s cohesion. There’s an emphasis on paying tribute to the elders. There’s a basic sense of family, both those who live together and the multigenerational families. So, all those things are strengths.

The more supportive, consistent and loving people around you, the more a young person’s risk of engaging in criminal or illicit behavior decreases. A healthy community is a strong protective factor.

The project emphasizes changing behaviors, not criminalizing gang identity. Why make this distinction?

Guillermo Cespedes: This is a philosophy that is informed by lessons learned from U.S. cities that have focused on identity rather than behavior and have unwittingly strengthened that identity. The war on gangs that lasted several decades in Los Angeles is a strategy that focused on gang identity and led to the criminalization of large numbers of youth based on what they looked like, where they lived, or who their friends were.

Our emphasis is Proponte Más is to collaborate with families to help them change behaviors that can be measured rather than emphasize where the family lives, or how the youth dresses. We want to focus on what the young person is is doing, what is his or her behavior. We want to know what does he/she does and how family members can be helpful in re directing that behavior. Our goal is to identify as many members of the family the family and wrap them around the young person in order to promote pro social behaviors.

At a broad community level, whether we’re working with violence associated with gangs, violence associated with extremist groups, any form of violence, our history shows that things get worse when we focus on how people look, how they dress, what neighborhood they live in, what ethnicity they are, whether they speak Spanish or not, whether they speak another language.

What are the challenges for a young person re-entering society after a confrontation with the justice system? Is reintegration possible?

Robyn Braverman: You have to look at the juvenile justice system in the bigger context. One of the challenges that Proponte Más has found with juvenile justice is that it’s defined solely through a legal lens, and what we’re finding is that it should be also defined through a broader lens that includes evidence based risk factors.

I think Honduras is looking at the possibilities through Proponte Más interventions—through both our interventions with grants on a community level but also in helping to think about new programs that receive kids who have alternative sentencing and help them to reintegrate.

Do I believe that reintegration is possible? Absolutely. There is a social stigma attached to those who are incarcerated or detained, and this type of thinking can hinder a young person for the rest of his or her life. I think everybody deserves a second chance, but especially kids.

What is the long-term hope or goal for each family?

Guillermo Cespedes: Every family comes to a point where their problem-solving mechanism gets jammed. Our job is to first help the family unjam that problem-solving mechanism and then help them to identify what to do to do that when it gets jammed again. The road to a healthy and prosocial lifestyle is not a straight line; there is no such thing as a family that’s going to find it’s perfect path overnight. What we’re trying to teach families is how

Ultimately, strong families will lead to strong kids who will be better equipped to fight the temptation or perceived necessity of engaging in criminal activities or joining gangs.

What makes this project unique?

Robyn Braverman: I just think the intervention is fantastic. I think it doesn’t seem so novel, but the novelty of taking a strategy team of counselors and meeting a family in their home is quite novel and pretty outstanding.

I think what I find most outstanding is how we get there. And I’m not lying when I say you’ve got to cross a bridge, sometimes you have to make a bridge. We counted 200 steps going up one – to one house, 200 steps down, then crossing another little bridge.

It validates the family immensely. To me, that’s the most inspiring; seeing the discipline of our counselors and how they use a systematic family counseling approach, how hard it is to not get emotionally involved, and how disciplined and rigorous this approach is, and how much evidence comes out of this that can really help us to prove that we’re reducing violence.

One more thing that I’m really proud of is how many small changes I’ve seen in the families and how excited they seem to have tools to help them rethink their relationships, both as parents or family members toward a child and vice-versa. The level of accountability that this project makes people feel and want to have is really remarkable.

HONDURAS: The building blocks for sustainable violence prevention

April 27, 2017

2 min read

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

Honduras:

The building blocks for sustainable violence prevention from communities to the capital

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]In its five years, Alianza Joven Honduras-USAID built a robust, nationwide violence prevention network that extended from youth volunteers in some of the most at-risk communities to government ministers. Explore its Outreach Centers, life skills coaching, Microsoft Academies, machismo workshops and other building blocks of a sustainable violence prevention approach in this special report.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]

IN HONDURAS, VIOLENCE PREVENTION BELONGS TO EVERYONE

For residents in at-risk Honduran communities, the Alianza Joven Honduras-USAID project has mobilized critical resources and energy to make their neighborhoods safer.

Read full story & watch video[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]

HONDURAN YOUTH RE-EXAMINE “MACHISMO” IN COURSE TO PREVENT VIOLENCE

The Alianza Joven Honduras project is prompting young men and women to think about gender stereotypes and how to counter societal pressures on young men that can lead to risky and sometimes violent behaviors.

Read full story & watch video[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]

DREAMING MY LIFE

In Jader’s neighborhood, many youth grow up like him— without much hope for the future. Fortunately, a new approach called “The Challenge of Dreaming My Life” is helping them dream of a better future and chart a course to get there.

Watch video[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]

LEARNING MICROSOFT IN THE BARRIO

Youth in Honduras’ most at-risk communities often have few opportunities to gain skills in technology. Through a partnership with Microsoft, Alianza Joven Honduras-USAID is bringing these opportunities to them, including the chance to get certified in tech skills valued by employers.

Watch video[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/12″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_widget_sidebar sidebar_id=”sidebar-primary”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Honduran youth re-examine “machismo” in course to prevent violence

April 27, 2017

By Jillian Slutzker

4 min read

In a crowded classroom in the 15th of September neighborhood Outreach Center, a group of young men and women gather for an unlikely discussion. The topic is masculinity and connections between “machismo”— a strong and aggressive expression of one’s manliness—and violence.

“Machismo poses that men are the strong sex and that men don’t express their emotions,” explains Carlos Guzman, a Master Trainer for the course and Sub-Coordinator of the Northern Region with the Alianza Joven Honduras project, which runs the course. “When I see [as a child] that expressing violence is a way of demonstrating my manhood, then I express my manhood through violence.”

While Honduras experiences one of the highest homicide rates in the world, levels of violence against women and girls are also alarming.

Four in 10 Honduran women surveyed reported having suffered from some form of violence against women and girls, according to a 2015 U.S. Agency for International Development survey. Commonly cited contributors included patriarchal culture, machismo, drug and alcohol abuse, and a lack of family role models, among others.

For many young women growing up here, the effects of machismo are profound.

“I believe that machismo affects people as to the definition of what women do and men do not. I think it makes us feel inferior as women. The men, because they are men, have more force than we women,” says Elizabeth Guity, a 20-year-old participant in the Outreach Center discussion.

As part of the broader youth-focused crime and violence prevention program, the Alianza Joven Honduras (Youth Alliance Honduras) project is prompting young men and women to think about stereotypes and how certain societal pressures on young men can lead to risky and sometimes violent behaviors. The project is funded by USAID and implemented by Creative Associates International.

To date, the program has carried out such masculinity workshops in 58 neighborhood Outreach Centers across the country, reaching more than 2,300 male and female youth ages 12 to 30. Youth take the course with peers around the same age.

Building a new “positive masculinity”

Guided by a trained instructor, the three-part masculinity workshops lead youth through three workbooks on violence prevention, how machismo affects men and women and how to build a positive masculinity that promotes healthy behaviors and relationships. It was originally developed by the Center for Violence Prevention in Nicaragua.

For young men raised in a society that emphasizes being “tough” and imparts this machismo through social norms, behaviors and attitudes, these workshops can be the first time they encounter a new prism through which to view masculinity.

Master Trainer Guzman says years of repressing emotions and experiences and acting “tough” is damaging to young men and can lead to violence.

“There comes a point where they have to explode and when that moment of explosion arrives, that catharsis, is when violence can occur,” he says.

Through frank discussions and guided exercises, instructors support young men in developing a “positive masculinity” through effective communication and conflict resolution, and expressing rather than repressing emotions.

Women and girls also play a critical role in this transformation, explains Guzman.

The goal is “building a society with a positive masculinity, in which young people understand where the problem of machismo is, how we can solve it and how we can build a positive masculinity together,” he says.

Before taking the masculinity course, 18-year-old Romel Alexander hadn’t thought much about the ways in which machismo affected his life. He now sees it—bravado over being bigger or stronger than someone else and pressure to conceal any weakness or emotion.

“You should also treat people well,” he says now, after taking the course. “It was also good that we should see, as men, that we could express” emotions.

Young women in the course are also internalizing these messages and carrying them forward.

“I know how I can be treated by a man, what treatment I should receive and how I should behave in society,” says Guity. “I know how to talk to children too, not to continue carrying this machismo generation after generation, but to stop it with my example, with what I learned in that workshop.”

Sharing the message to stop violence

To reach as many people as possible with this message, masculinity workshop instructors prepare mentors and other trainers in the communities who then replicate the workshops in schools, churches and community meetings.

“This machismo not only affects young people, but affects the whole family; youth, adults, children, adolescents, parents, mothers,” says Guzman. “The more access people have to the methodology the easier it is to address the problem.”

Students of the course believe it can be a tool to prevent violence. Many say that they plan to play a role in advancing the message themselves to peers and to the next generation.

“I can affect communication,” says Alexander. “Tomorrow, when I am grown up, I’ll take what I’ve learned [in the course] to set an example for my children.”

With reporting by Emanuel Rodriguez