Apopa, El Salvador: Community-led violence intervention at work

June 16, 2020

1 min read

Two years ago, the municipality of Apopa ranked second for its homicide rates in El Salvador. Today, it has dropped to 31. While a host of factors and conditions have led to decreased levels of violence in “la ciudad mágica,” community-centered interventions are at the heart of a place-based strategy supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Partner Spotlight: Community-led violence prevention

June 10, 2020

2 min read

In Tikal Norte, a community in Apopa, El Salvador, once oppressed by gang violence, has not had a single homicide in more than a year.

A local organization, Comandos de Salvamento, has worked closely with the community and its leaders to transform Tikal Norte, bringing families back to abandoned homes, establishing a police presence and painting murals over bullet holes.

To help effect change in a community so plagued by violence, Comandos took a community-driven, holistic approach with support from the USAID Crime and Violence Prevention Project (CVPP).

Comandos had worked in the Apopa area primarily on emergency response – training school students on fire safety and evacuation procedures and operating private ambulances. The group was eager to work on longer-term violence prevention programming but lacked the tools and resources.

From left: Roberto Cruz, CVPP’s Glenda Marroquin and community intervention worker Noé del Cid. Photo by: Carlos Diaz

CVPP, which shared violence prevention best practices through study tours and other exchanges among practitioners in the United States and Latin America, introduced Comandos to successful approaches used in Los Angeles. Experts in community-level interventions for interrupting cycles of violence, namely from an L.A.-based organization called Progressive, traveled to El Salvador to work with Comandos and share their expertise.

“Before this project, we thought that we were doing everything perfectly, but we realized that we needed a lot [of support],” says Comandos Director Roberto Cruz. “The project has helped us to professionalize in that regard, to put everything we learned in practice, not only here in Apopa, but on a national level wherever we can work.”

During a year and a half, Comandos worked to empower the local leadership council to design and implement projects to benefit Tikal Norte’s residents, such as reclaiming public spaces, installing streetlights and painting murals. Central to this process was building trust with the community so that residents – including some gang-involved youth – would participate in the initiatives.

“Part of the focus of the violence interventions in Los Angeles is based on building relationships with the community … We realized that it was the right thing to do to work with the community and strengthen the people,” Cruz says. “We started to work a lot on activities of community cohesion.”

Comandos’ activities in Tikal Norte reestablished community ties and legitimized the local leadership council, so it can continue the progress that’s been made. For Cruz, their success is evident in the number of families that have returned to homes they had abandoned.

“There were 29 houses where [the gangs] said to the families, ‘You leave, or you die,’” he recalls. “Twenty-two families have returned to the community. So you see the confidence that now exists in the community.”

Click here to learn more about CVPP’s work to prevent violence in Apopa.

Seven awards in two contests for Creative’s multimedia reporting in Central America

June 3, 2020

5 min read

A multimedia package highlighting the drivers of Central American migration earned prestigious Telly Awards for outstanding non-broadcast work in the categories of documentary series, social issues, videography/cinematography and editing, Creative Associates International announced.

Called “Saliendo Adelante,” the winning package is a showcase of 17 videos, most of which profile people who had migrated from Honduras, El Salvador or Guatemala, a region known as the Northern Triangle.

From the video project also stemmed a website, print collateral and a Think Creative cover story centered on one of the most in-depth analyses to date of local factors that drive most migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, also known as the Northern Triangle. The study, conducted by Creative, it is based on extensive data mining, statistical analysis and a 2,400-person survey conducted in February and March 2019.

“This ambitious outreach campaign puts faces to the study’s revealing statistics,” says Pablo Maldonado, Creative’s Chief Operating Officer, who also led the Northern Triangle research initiative. “I commend the team in headquarters and the field who worked on this major and impressive multimedia package.”

The 2020 Telly Awards are all from the non-broadcast category and comprise the following: Silver, Documentary: Series; Silver, General: Social Issues; Silver, Craft: Videography/Cinematography; and Bronze, Craft: Editing.

Guatemala migrant and child — Ervin Choc, a returned migrant and one of the people the team interviewed, stands with his daughter in a corn field his family rents. Photos by Janey Fugate.

In another competition, “Saliendo Adelante” won a Communicator Award of Excellence in the category of Campaign or Series Video.

During three weeks of field production, Creative crisscrossed Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to capture the stories of people who had previously migrated or planned to make the trip to another country, typically to the United States. Focusing on the communities that are the primary sources migration, the extensive production took the teams from the rural Western Highlands of Guatemala to dense urban neighborhoods of San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

Creative’s Senior Writer and Editor Evelyn Rupert was the lead producer for the project from planning to post-production and script writing. Janey Fugate was the lead photographer, videographer, video editor and secondary script writer, whose technical videography and editing skills earned the project two Telly Awards. The pair began planning for the trip in February 2019 and finished production by June.

Creative’s Senior Director Michael J. Zamba supervised the project and traveled with Rupert and Fugate to Honduras to support the field production. Communications Manager Marta Maldonado traveled with the team to El Salvador in support of filming. Senior Designer Amanda Smallwood designed the microsite and print collateral, including Think Creative. Jillian Slutzker, at the time the Strategic Content Manager, coordinated the project.

During planning and filming, the production team received assistance from many friends and colleagues in the region, including: In Honduras, Amalia San Martín; Kenny Castillo; Arnold Linares; in Guatemala, Dan Mooney, Steve Dudenhoefer and Carlos Quim; and in El Salvador Gerson Lara, Rodrigo Moran and Harold Sibaja.

As part of the package, Creative also followed the story to suburban Washington, D.C., to profile a family that migrated to the United States to flee violence in El Salvador. They are in the process of applying for asylum. Called “Juan Carlos and Jessica’s story,” it was produced and edited by segment contributor Veronica Balderas. Erick Gibson was the photographer and videographer.

In addition, Creative sent a team to Tijuana to profile a Honduran migrant who was waiting at the U.S.-Mexico border. Called “Jose’s story,” it was filmed, written and edited by Lucas Williams.

Unrelated to “Saliendo Adelante,” Creative earned two 2020 Telly Awards for its package called “Families at the Forefront of Preventing Violence,” which focuses on a Honduras crime and violence prevention program called Proponte Más, which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. The three videos, filmed in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, Honduras, in August, earned two Bronze awards for Documentary: Series and  Craft:Videography/Cinematography, both in the non-broadcast cateory.

Since 2016, Creative has won 16 prestigious Telly Awards. Each year, the Telly Awards showcases the best work created within television and across video, for all screens. Receiving more than 12,000 entries from all 50 U.S. states and five continents, Telly Award winners represent work from some of the most respected advertising agencies, television stations, production companies and publishers from around the world.

Creative’s President and CEO, Leland Kruvant, congratulated the team for the 2020 awards.

“We believe that the combination of groundbreaking research and excellent storytelling will allow communities and policymakers to better understand and respond to the drivers of migration,” Kruvant says.

Honduras family — Dariana Zapata (center left) poses for a portrait with her family on Honduras’ Caribbean Coast. Dariana was one of the many parents who expressed her desire to support her child as motivation for emigrating.

About the study

In February 2019, Creative commissioned an ambitious research study that first zeroed in on those municipalities that have the highest rates of outward migration from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Analyzing data from nearly 900 municipalities, Creative identified the 60 that combined account for more than half of all the region’s emigration.

In those 60 municipalities, Creative then conducted 2,400 individual in–person surveys to gather data on intentions to migrate, family, the economic situation of the household and exposure to crime, among other points. Based on these surveys and extensive data analysis, Creative was able to distinguish the different triggers of migration in each municipality, as well as paint a general portrait of potential migrants.

These conclusions shed light on the region’s textured migration landscape and can be used to inform highly focused programming that can mitigate irregular migration and improve the conditions of Central Americans. The study took on the name “Saliendo Adelante,” borrowing from a Spanish phrase that was heard frequently across the region as people described what drives them to migrate – their resilience and desire to move forward in life.

“Young people in neighborhoods dominated by gangs need positive examples”: Enrique Roig

May 27, 2020

By Felipe Morales Sierra, El Espectador

6 min read

This Q&A first appeared in Colombian publication El Espectador and has been translated to English. Click here to read the original.

In Colombia, one-third of the country’s prison population is made up of young people between 18 and 28 years old, and 68 of every 100,000 minors in Colobmia have restrictions on their freedom due to conflicts with the law. The recruitment of young people to criminal groups, gangs and other types of organized crime is a problem that the world has been trying to find answers for, and an initiative from Creative Associates International and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) seeks to look deeper into the reasons for recruitment to offer solutions from the ground up.

Through a study initiated this year in Colombia, they seek to determine what leads young people to get involved in crime. In an interview with El Espectador, Enrique Roig, Director of the Citizen Security Practice Area at Creative Associates International, details a pilot diagnostic that was done with minors involved in the juvenile justice system (Sistema Penal de Responsabilidad Adolescente). The diagnostic, Roig explains, stems from a public health approach, in which violence is understood as a disease whose transmission has to be stopped, and a focus on strengthening young people’s ties to the environments that protect them, such as their families and schools.

How was this tool for diagnosing the risk level of young people for becoming involved in crime developed?

The instrument was created by the University of Southern California to understand the individual risk factors that affect a young person’s vulnerability to being recruited into a gang or engaging with criminal activity. It first emerged in a project in communities of Los Angeles with a high prevalence of these issues.

Then, the model was brought to Mexico and Honduras, and we’ve adapted it to six countries. In Colombia, we formed an alliance with IOM to adapt it to the Colombian context and observe which factors are affecting youth here.

What does that adaptation entail?

We’ve performed a small pilot with IOM to adapt the interviews we do with young people, adjusting them to the Colombian context and also observing the different scales within the instrument to see how relevant these measurements are in Colombia. The model has risk factors and protective factors related to community, family, school, individual and peers.

What did the Colombia pilot focus on?

For this sample, we performed 164 surveys in Bogotá, Cali, Soacha (Cundinamarca), Caloto (Cauca) and Ibagué. We need to expand the diagnosis to begin to adapt it to other contexts within Colombia, because we want this instrument to help ongoing and future interventions be more accurate in reducing these risks. Programs that work with young people at risk of being recruited by criminal gangs find it difficult to measure impact. Since interventions often include a little bit of everything, from soccer to theater to family counselling and therapy, in the end it’s hard to conclude if the risk level is being reduced or not.

Why, despite the recognized efforts of states in Colombia, are there so many young people involved in crime?

What we know from the evidence is that there is a series of factors that influence a young person’s involvement in crime. If programs had that information and knew exactly what behaviors have to be changed and how to do it through protective factors, they would have much more impact. The problem is that, without that information, work with young people is often done based on a hunch or anecdotes that it worked for a certain youth. What this diagnosis does is provide information to specify much more and say, for example, this program is costing a certain amount and the impact we observe is that young people are not carrying guns anymore and there’s a reduction in homicides.

Which factors lead a young person to get involved in crime?

What we constantly observe from Los Angeles to Tegucigalpa is it’s a lack of supervision from parents, negative peer influence, use of drugs and critical life events. We can say that a critical event is based on how a young person perceives that event, It doesn’t have to be the death of a loved one; a critical event may also be an argument with a boyfriend or girlfriend. That combination of factors, from what we’ve seen, is the most influential. Certainly, there are also contexts of the community where they live, with factors such as dignity and poverty. It’s not that one risk factor is more important than the other; it’s a combination of several that make someone more susceptible to recruitment.

In other words, what you’re saying is that since risk factors that are present can’t always be avoided, the focus should be on working to strengthen protective factors.

Exactly. For example, within the family, much can be done to reduce risk factors. Our job is focused a lot on families and schools. Only things like improving communication or expectations can really influence relationships between young people and parents, which in turn change other behaviors, such as the parents knowing how late their child will be out and with whom.

What do you recommend to families whose youth are most vulnerable to getting involved in crime?

Our job is focused on building better relationships, the flexibility of rules, adaptation to certain circumstances so that the family can know each other better, because sometimes they don’t talk. Once there are better relationships, not only with parents but with other family members, that can really help in building another vision for the youth and what he can do with his life. Because, in neighborhoods dominated by gangs, young people need examples from positive peers, and that is found within the family and in some school figures such as teachers.

What can Colombia learn from the countries where you have already worked?

A lot. And Colombia also has a lot of experience in this field. What is really needed for this to take hold is commitment and the resources to do a comprehensive program. We already know that, throughout the world, the trend is that in a given neighborhood, 0.05 percent of young people commit around 75 percent of the crimes. If we can reach that group, knowing what their risks are and with programs that are really directed at them changing those behaviors, we can have a bigger impact.

Why use a public health method to address the issue of youth crime?

We see violence as if it were an epidemic. What we try to do is to stop its transmission. If we know that violence is occurring within a small group in a specific neighborhood, we have to reach them. That has to be the main intervention. But the challenge in Latin American countries is that it is thought that the problem can only be solved by the police, when a lot can be done with social programs. To implement those programs, however, we must be clear on where they are going to work, with whom, and what type of intervention they need. Without that, you end up with a number of programs that try to do a thousand things, but they don’t prevent the recruitment of young people or reduce violence.

When people push for incarceration or longer sentences, how do you advocate for a public health approach?

That happens in the United States, as well, because punitive measures are the easiest response. But the public health approach allows us to demonstrate that, when we can think about people and the contexts they’re in, we can have a greater reduction in violence. In addition, the impact ends up being much more sustainable than taking a punitive approach.

Local ownership creates lasting legacy in Honduras

April 29, 2020

By Evelyn Rupert

4 min read

It’s early on a Saturday, but a few kids and volunteers are already at the Outreach Center, sweeping the floor, rearranging chairs and getting started on a game of foosball. They greet Arnold Linares as he unlocks the gym, classroom and computer lab spaces for the day.

Linares, a pastor, and his family oversee this busy center in the Rivera Hernandez district, a sector that has made slow but steady progress to reduce the high levels of gang violence that make it notorious.

The Outreach Center has been a key part of that progress for more than a decade. There, children and youth find a safe space to build skills like leadership and goal setting, learn a trade, take computer classes, play music, make art or participate in sports.

Two young boys play foosball. — Two boys play foosball on a table in the Rivera Hernandez Outreach Center. Photos by Janey Fugate.

“It’s a great privilege that here, in this sector that used to be very violent, they created what was the first Outreach Center,” says Linares, who has lived and worked in Rivera Hernandez for some 40 years. “Now we have more than 60 Outreach Centers across Honduras.”

The Rivera Hernandez Outreach Center was the first such center established in Honduras through a USAID program implemented by Creative called Alianza Joven Honduras (Honduras Youth Alliance). Today, there are 68 centers dotted across Honduras’ most vulnerable neighborhoods.

And while Alianza Joven helped get many of the Outreach Centers off the ground, they have continued to operate and grow in number since the program’s scheduled close in 2017. Today, the Outreach Center network is managed by the National Foundation for the Development of Honduras, known in Spanish as FUNADEH.

“As early as 2012, we recognized FUNADEH’s potential to be a strong legacy partner with the expertise and passion to take over the Outreach Centers,” says Salvador Stadthagen, Director of Creative’s Latin America and Caribbean Strategy and former Chief of Party of Alianza Joven. “We have since seen how they have not just maintained the centers, but continued to evolve, expand and meet the needs of these communities.”

FUNADEH, established in Honduras in 1983, had a long history of social and economic development in vulnerable communities. Alianza Joven partnered with the organization to develop an Outreach Center in Chamelecón, another high-violence area outside of San Pedro Sula. By 2013, FUNADEH began overseeing seven centers in the San Pedro Sula area.

Pastor Arnold Linares and his daughter Sara pose for a photo in the Outreach Center. — Arnold and Julia Linares have passed their commitment to the Outreach Center onto their daughter Sara (right), who serves as its coordinator.

From there, the partnership grew. With encouragement from Alianza Joven, FUNADEH presented a concept to USAID and signed a cooperative agreement. Creative transferred knowledge and methodologies, provided mentorship, helped FUNADEH build its networks, and merged some staff members. With this support during the initial handover phase, FUNADEH was able to assume full responsibility of the Outreach Centers.

Marco Matute of FUNADEH says this partnership has helped the organization better serve the communities and built ownership among local governments and the private sector.

“FUNADEH was strengthened with the opportunity of working with Creative as a partner, adopting positive and effective practices in social development and violence prevention with a unique approach to engaging communities,” says Matute, the Deputy Chief of Party of FUNADEH’s Genesis project, which oversees the Outreach Centers.

Since Alianza Joven ended, FUNADEH has expanded the centers’ offerings to include additional leadership trainings, workforce development, outdoor activities and art.

“FUNADEH was strengthened with the opportunity of working with Creative as a partner”

It has also developed significant support for the Outreach Centers from local governments and businesses, greatly reducing contributions by USAID. FUNADEH has leveraged $2.7 million in investments from more than 50 private sector companies. An additional $6.6 million in resources have been mobilized from local and national government agencies, universities, and nongovernmental organizations.

“The Outreach Center model has remained attractive to many companies that have found its infrastructure friendly to their social responsibility efforts, while also matching needs for Outreach Center sustainability,” Matute says. “In the past, USAID would cover most of the cost of opening an Outreach Center. Now FUNADEH´s fundraising allows USAID to provide modest support for start-up operations.”

Looking ahead, FUNADEH is working on creating a National Outreach Center Association with national and local boards to further cement the centers’ sustainability and local ownership so that Outreach Centers like the one in Rivera Hernandez can continue to serve vulnerable populations.

“Outreach Centers have provided unmeasurable benefits to the lives of children and youths living in communities,” Matute says. “And they are stronger than ever.”

Tejiendo Paz addresses environmental issues, conflict and the pandemic

April 27, 2020

By Janey Fugate

7 min read

Totonicapan, Guatemala — Wearing the brightly colored skirt typical of Maya women in the Western Highlands, Nicolasa Grasiela Checlan held up a baton with a black tassel hanging from the top. The baton signifies her status as an “alguasil,” a leader in her community’s elected council of indigenous representatives known as 48 cantones, which has existed for nearly 200 years.

As a woman and an indigenous leader, Checlan represents one of the primary groups that Tejiendo Paz, or the Peacebuilding Project, has engaged in its efforts to promote social cohesion in remote Guatemalan communities. These communities, like much of Guatemala, have a rich indigenous identity with members speaking Spanish as their second language.

Nicolas Checlan holds up the baton in her home, a symbol of her Maya identity and leadership. Photos by Janey Fugate.

Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and implemented by Creative Associates International in consortium with ProPaz Foundation and PartnersGlobal, the project addresses violence and conflict related to land use, natural resources, youth, family and gender issues and governance by giving communities the tools to prevent, mitigate and resolve conflicts, and work towards their own development.

“The project is necessary so that the people can become empowered not just in knowing their rights, but in having the tools to make their rights count, and to build bridges between the state and private businesses and the communities using dialogue,” says Erwin Salazar of ProPaz, a Guatemalan organization with more than two decades of leading peace building initiatives in the country and Creative’s implementing partner.

With a focus on youth engagement and women’s empowerment, the project works with communities to develop “community visions,” which are action plans to address conflict issues, to serve as road maps for accessing resources and services and to set development goals.

“Finding solutions is important because if we are constantly in conflict, we’re losing our values,” said Neuton Barreno, a youth from Totonicapán who had attended several meetings hosted by the project’s community facilitators. “We want to do this so other generations can live in peace.”

#QuedateEnCasa: The project responds to COVID-19

As the COVID-19 pandemic brought the country to a standstill with nationwide curfews and a suspension of mass transportation, the project’s connections and its team’s fluency in indigenous languages suddenly became even more critical to continue reaching its intended audiences. The public health crisis has exacerbated tensions in an environment already conducive to conflict, giving the Tejiendo Paz team an unlooked-for scenario to apply its peacebuilding strategies and strengthen communities even under lockdown.

During the COVID-19 pandemic as in normal times, the project relies on community facilitators to build relationships in remote, rural areas. Often originating from the same places where they work, the facilitators are fluent in local Mayan languages and understand the layers of complexity that decades of instability, systemic discrimination towards indigenous people and poverty have brought to the four municipalities that the project currently covers.

Drawing on these relationships, the team has created eight WhatsApp groups for key community members, including for youth, women and leaders, to share reliable information on the pandemic in both Spanish and in the local languages Mam and K’iche. The community facilitators are managing the chats and are using them to address more than proper hygiene.

The project uses the WhatsApp chats to engage communities and share reliable information on COVID-19.

Deportees and migrants re-entering communities have escalated tensions because of community members’ concerns over their risk for bringing the virus. Economic loss due to closing non-essential businesses and decreased access to food are also hitting communities hard. But even as facilitators respond to immediate issues through the group chats, they are able to look at how the crisis can inform longer term community development.

“With the chats and the community facilitators’ work, we are able to see how crises bring destabilizing factors to light, and this gives us a chance to learn from how communities are responding and how we can incorporate these lessons into the community action plans,” said Sara Barker, the project’s Chief of Party.

Tejiendo Paz is also responding to the reported increase in rates of domestic violence since the nation went under lockdown. Often exacerbated by substance abuse and the lack of institutional repercussions for such cases, familial and gender-based violence are keys issue the project addresses. As the pandemic has heightened the risk for women and children in particular, the project has ramped up a social media campaign dedicated to promoting family unity and to providing information on how to report this kind of crime.

“Social media has an important role to play right now in the prevention of intrafamilial violence. We want to use these messages to continue to change people’s attitudes,” says Maria León, a community facilitator.

Water and the spread of COVID-19

Population growth compounded by prolonged droughts in the region have led to what many say is the gravest threat to poor, rural communities in Guatemala: water scarcity.

“What we are most worried about is our kids because they are the future of our community, and as long as there isn’t enough water how can we hope they will be better off than we are?” says Violeta Gabriel, a mother living in Comitancillo.

Half of people living below the poverty line in Guatemala don’t have access to sanitation services. Lack of sanitation and clean water is exacerbated in rural areas, where adequate distribution of water has not been a state priority. In community meetings, facilitators say that access to water is one of the biggest concerns that people want to address.

“The water that we get isn’t enough for everyone, and that becomes a conflict,” says Camilo Marroquín, a school teacher in Comitancillo and part of the local group that oversees his village’s water distribution.

Water scarcity and the burden it already places both on individuals and the healthcare system makes the communication efforts Tejiendo Paz is leading around COVID-19 even more critical. Lack of water available for cleaning heightens the risk of spreading COVID-19, so reinforcing messages around abiding by the lockdown measures and practicing proper hygiene will be the best way to keep cases from spreading in areas where getting medical attention is already difficult.

This Facebook post is written in Mam, an indigenous language commonly spoken in several municipalities the project covers.

“In the communities where we work, families are big and often include elderly grandparents who are more vulnerable to the virus, and many don’t have reliable access to clean water,” says Eva Pinzón, the community facilitators’ lead coordinator for Tejiendo Paz. “Through our communications we want to make sure they know the risks and understand the prevention methods because a lot of information doesn’t reach them, or it doesn’t reach them in their language.”

Addressing environmental conflict

Before COVID-19 interrupted in-person meetings, Tejiendo Paz was in the middle of implementing conflict and resilience analyses with community members, which involves relationship building and gathering critical information on the kinds of issues communities are experiencing.

Community members repeatedly cite environmental issues as major sources of conflict and insecurity in the region. These issues range from protecting land from extractive industries to disputed land use among neighbors. But Nicolasa Checlan explained that one of the most pervasive and frustrating issues for many is waste disposal.

“The river isn’t like what it used to be, running with black waters and trash,” she says, explaining that trash generated by one community flows downstream to contaminate the neighboring village, leading to conflict.

As populations have grown in the last few decades, so has the quantity of waste. And the prevalence of single use plastics and other disposable consumer goods has not corresponded to an increase in recycling or waste management facilities in most of the areas where the project works.

“Our population has grown, but the education on how to take care of the environment hasn’t,” says Adan Rosales Velasco, an alguasil in Totonicapán.

Before the pandemic, community facilitators meet with youth and local leaders in a typical meeting.

The problem of trash may seem trivial, but it isn’t. For instance, facilitator Maria León cited that when trash blows into grazing pastures, there’s a risk that cattle could eat it and get sick, leading to economic loss for the owner. Because community members have varying levels of awareness on proper disposal of waste, these differences in expectation have heightened tensions between communities and neighbors.

As Tejiendo Paz moves into the phase of developing community visions the project will work with communities to devise solutions to address the issues such as trash pollution and waste management, whether through supporting youth to lead awareness campaigns or mobilizing community leaders to bring government services to address waste in their towns.

Looking ahead

Beyond responding to the coronavirus outbreak, the project’s broader goal is to support indigenous communities in strengthening their organizational structures to go to the government for services and resources, and to resolve issues amongst themselves. In this way, the peacebuilding activities and community engagement plans are intended to support communities in resolving conflict and promoting healthy environments where communities have collective goals and paths to achieve them.

“Because we are not only here to resolve conflicts but to restore the social fabric and rebuild peace, and that is why the facilitators insist on identity and that they understand in practice the concept of peace,” says Carlos Sartí, a founding member of ProPaz. “It is not a dove or an ideal place or paradise where everything is perfect. Rather, it means asking: today, what can we do to build good relationships?”

Partner Spotlight: Counseling to support justice-involved youth

March 31, 2020

2 min read

In juvenile detention centers and vulnerable communities, Orphan Helpers works to support abandoned, at-risk and incarcerated youth with training and mentorship so they can set and reach their goals for the future.In Honduras, the USAID Proponte Más violence prevention program, implemented by Creative, partnered with Orphan Helpers on an innovative pilot program to reach youth in conflict with the law.

Through a grant, Orphan Helpers applied Proponte Más’ family counseling model to a group of 64 youth under 18 who had come into conflict with the law. The counseling works with the entire family over months to strengthen relationships and communication and build youth resilience to engaging with gangs or violence. In the case of youth at a “tertiary” risk level – those who had already been in conflict with the law – the counseling was also aimed at preventing recidivism.

Orphan Helpers counselor Regina Luna talks with a young family in their home. — Regina Luna of Orphan Helpers pays a visit to the home of a young man who was released from juvenile detention with alternative measures. Photo by: Janey Fugate

Nahun Morales, who leads Orphan Helpers’ Honduras operations, said the grant was the organization’s first experience partnering with USAID and was an opportunity to build upon the work they were already doing with vulnerable youth.

“Improving our interventions was a fundamental part of what we were looking for, and Proponte Más was the partner that guided us and helped us grow in every area of the organization,” Morales said. “Proponte Más opened the door for us and worked with us through the process.”

“Proponte Más was the partner that guided us and helped us grow in every area of the organization”
–Nahun Morales

Of the youth who participated in the pilot program, 80 percent have not reoffended. And with support from Orphan Helpers, several young people have managed to leave gangs that they were involved with, creating a fresh start for themselves and their families.

In addition, the work of Proponte Más has positioned Orphan Helpers as a go-to referral organization for youth exiting detention. With support from judges, public defenders and others who work with youth, the program has advocated for reducing the number of youth in detention and the use of “alternative measures” – similar to probation.

Judges now refer juvenile offenders to Orphan Helpers as an alternative to detention or a path to early release.

“We concluded this experience successful in every sense. We feel enriched technically and operationally,” Nahun said. “Proponte Más has offered a much more pointed intervention and positioned us as a referral organization for the population we work with.”

Empowering women in agriculture in rural Honduras

March 9, 2020

4 min read

Reina Fonseca, Dry Corridor — Reina Fonseca of the dry Corridor holds her produce during harvest season. Photo by Gabriel Rodriguez. Photo by: Gabriel Rodriguez

Rural women in Honduras are often an invisible pillar in their own homes, supporting their families’ livelihoods without recognition or a voice in decision making processes. Part of my work is to support women’s increased involvement in agricultural activities, which can yield a host of benefits for communities.

But my experience has shown me that we cannot expect a woman to be empowered when she has no sense of self-worth to draw from. We have to work from the inside out.

Rural women at a severe disadvantage

About a quarter of Honduras’ 2 million rural women work in agriculture. But Honduras has one of the highest rates of inequality in access and control of productive resources like land, tools, property and credit. Men are seen as the owners of these resources and as in control of the agricultural processes.

Women in rural Honduras are expected to take care of domestic work, prepare food and raise children. But they are also a crucial – and often unrecognized – part of agriculture and income generation. They help tend small gardens, select seeds, raise livestock, transport water, harvest and process crops. Women are also frequently involved in selling goods in informal markets.

Despite their contributions to their households’ livelihoods, women are excluded from making decisions on what to produce, the details of the harvest or how to spend money. They rarely receive any income themselves.

As stated by the U.N., addressing these gender inequalities in agriculture is central to increasing crop production, reducing malnutrition and improving livelihoods.

Recognizing the power dynamics in the homes of agricultural producers and smallholder farmers, the Dry Corridor Alliance (ACS)-PROSASUR puts a gender-sensitive lens on all project components, from planning and implementation to monitoring and evaluation.

The program aims to reach 6,000 poor and extreme poor families in the climate-fragile Dry Corridor region of southern Honduras, reduce chronic childhood malnutrition and raise the incomes of smallholder farmers. To achieve these goals, we must also address the lack of value placed on traditionally women’s roles and support women as key contributors to local economies.

The ripple effect: women helping women

At the household and community level, we build awareness of women’s role in the production process, the local economy and in decision making. Through workshops designed to teach joint household decision making, ACS-PROSASUR helps women establish co-responsibility with their partners so that they have more time, mobility and space to do agricultural activities without being overloaded by their other daily tasks.

We’ve seen that women trained through our programs then share their knowledge with their daughters, neighbors and friends, thus multiplying the message across their communities. Women become the best motivators for other women seeking to change the dynamics of gender inequality in agriculture.

women's health meeting in Honduras — Women gather for a community health meeting led by a ACS-PROSASUR staff member. Photo by Janey Fugate.

Supporting women as heads of households

ACS-PROSASUR also focuses on women as heads of households, building their capacity and ownership over income generation and agricultural production and shifting perceptions of women as leaders in rural communities.

Since the start of the project, we’ve supported 1,100 women who are heads of their households create food security and nutrition plans for their homes. These plans include technical assistance, installation of irrigation systems, and the supplies and tools needed to establish plots that produce basic grains and produce with high nutritional and commercial value. The project has also supported women who do not own their own plots but have access to land belonging to another family member or in-law to give them autonomy in production.

Agricultural business plans have been created for 1,750 homes, 35 percent of them with women as heads of household. These plans have helped establish 350 hectares of irrigation.

Similarly, we develop non-agricultural business plans for households that don’t have access to land. More than 250 homes have participated, and 50 percent of them are led by women involved in production and in microenterprises that break with traditional roles.

Changing the narrative

In my 10 years working with rural women, I have seen how factors like self-worth and autonomy and issues such as domestic violence feed into social and economic inequities. It’s difficult to ask a woman to be a leader in her community when her voice is overshadowed at home.

But giving women and their families tools to improve their livelihoods can both change the narrative around women’s role in society and lead to healthier families and communities. When a woman’s sense of purpose awakens, we begin to see real change.

couple in the Dry Corridor — Helping households achieve food security is a major goal for ACS-PROSASUR’s work in the Dry Corridor. Photo by Gabriel Rodriguez.

Yajaira Hernández is the Gender Advisor for the Dry Corridor Alliance Project in Honduras.

San Salvador inaugurates Outreach Center to serve city’s vulnerable youth

November 7, 2019

By Evelyn Rupert

3 min read

A new Outreach Center opened its doors in the heart of downtown San Salvador, creating a safe space and “second home” for the city’s children and youth.

The Libertad Outreach Center, named for its location near the Libertad Plaza of historic San Salvador, is the first center to open in the capital city is the 169th across the country established with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Representatives from USAID, the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador, the city of San Salvador and other municipalities, along with youth and their families, cut the ribbon on the new center in late October, celebrating with music and dance performances.

The mayor of San Salvador, USAID El Salvador mission director, and U.S. ambassador take a tour of the Outreach Center computer lab. — San Salvador Mayor Ernesto Muyshondt, USAID El Salvador Mission Director David Gosney and U.S. Ambassador Ronald Johnson take a tour of the Outreach Center computer lab.

“Through the Libertad Outreach Center, we are contributing to violence prevention and positively influencing the lives of the many youth who will benefit from this space,” said San Salvador Mayor Ernesto Muyshondt at the inauguration event.

Outreach Centers serve as a safe space for young people to productively spend free time and offer support and opportunities including tutoring, computer courses, goal-setting workshops, music lessons, volunteerism and much more. The Libertad Outreach Center is expected to serve 2,000 youth each month.

“We know that many Salvadoran families face economic challenges and insecurity,” said U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador Ronald Johnson at the inauguration. “We need to give youth concrete alternatives and provide an answer to the needs of the communities, offering better access to education, jobs, cultural activities, sports and safer public spaces.”

Outreach Centers have been a major piece of the USAID-funded Crime and Violence Prevention Project, which has worked with 55 municipalities in El Salvador on solutions to build resilience in vulnerable communities. The Libertad Outreach Center is set to be the final center opened under the project, which began in 2013.

The three-story Libertad Outreach Center includes a computer lab, recording studio and music room, games area and classrooms. The center was developed with $88,000 from the Crime and Violence Prevention Project and a $70,000 investment by the municipality of San Salvador.

All services for children and youth are provided for free, but the center will fund its operations and programming in part through an attached coffee shop open to the public and through alliances with the private sector and government institutions.

A network of safe spaces

The Outreach Center model began under a preceding USAID project, Alianza Joven Regional, which ran in El Salvador from 2008 to 2013 and established the first 41 Outreach Centers. The remaining 128 Outreach Centers were established under the Crime and Violence Prevention Project and have benefited more than 39,500 people to date.

The inauguration of San Salvador’s first Outreach Center is also another milestone in a larger collaborative effort to revitalize and restore the historic center of San Salvador, which has been beset by high levels of crime and violence. The Crime and Violence Prevention Project has supported the restoration of public spaces and worked to make residents feel safer in their own communities.

A group of boys plays a soccer video game at the new Outreach Center. — Kids enjoy a game corner at the Libertad Outreach Center with one of the center’s coordinators.

The Crime and Violence Prevention Project transitions operation of the Outreach Centers, as well as other violence prevention tools, to their respective municipalities to ensure sustainability.

The Outreach Centers are staffed by coordinators but rely heavily on youth volunteers to support the wide range of activities and serve as role models for younger children.

Esther Ramírez, one of four coordinators of the Libertad Outreach Center, said that because of her own upbringing in central San Salvador, she recognizes the challenges and opportunities that youth need to learn and develop skills that will serve them throughout their lives.

“The Libertad Outreach Center will be a place of hope for all children and youth so that they can grow, learn to serve, set goals for their lives, and give and receive love,” she said.

Healthy homes and harvests for families in Honduras’ Dry Corridor

October 8, 2019

5 min read

By Jillian Slutzker

The yuca plants are nearly ready to harvest in José Belberto Varela’s small garden outside his home in the San José community of Concepción de María in southern Honduras. It’s a simple but important milestone for Varela’s family of six and just one of many changes they’re seeing this season.

Nestled in Honduras’ Dry Corridor, a region known for severe droughts and resulting food insecurity, the Varela family has struggled to access clean water and to grow crops. And like many in this region where more than 90 percent of people live below the poverty line, the Varelas’ home lacked some of the basic amenities needed to keep their four children, all under age 11, healthy.

Jose Valera displays his new clean cook stove, which the family received through ACS-PROSASUR support. Photos by Amalia San Martin.

But that was before the family started growing new crops for consumption and sale, raising chickens for eggs and meat and benefiting from household improvements. In short, it was before the Varela family began participating in the ACS-PROSASUR project, which works in 12 municipalities in the southern departments of Choluteca and El Paraíso to improve livelihoods and build resiliency for 6,000 poor and extreme poor families.

“I feel grateful because thank God I now have better conditions for my children. I never imagined that one day I would get help, that I would benefit from ACS-PROSASUR and that one day my house would change completely,” says José Belberto Varela.

The project has two main components: Food Production and Income Generation to boost resiliency for smallholder farmers; and Nutrition Education and Household Hygiene to combat chronic malnutrition in children under 2 and in pregnant women.

The Varelas are one of 1,000 families in the region benefiting from both. Families qualify for both components if they fall below the poverty or extreme poverty line, as well as having children younger than age 2 or a pregnant woman in the household. Also, they must own a plot of land at least 500 square meters.

ACS-PROSASUR is implemented by Creative Associates International in partnership with the Honduras Strategic Investment Office, INVEST-H, and receives funding from the World Bank through the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program. It is one piece of the larger Dry Corridor Alliance, which aims to lift 50,000 families out of extreme poverty and reduce under-nutrition by 20 percent in target communities.

A healthier home inside

A couple hours’ drive away from the Varela home, in the rural community of Chagüiton, Namasigüe, Nuris Amparo Pastrana details just a few of the improvements she’s received through the project from the floor she stands on to the air she breathes.

Nuris Amparo Pastrana stands in her home in Chagüiton, Namasigüe. Through the project, her home received a clean stove, new cement floors, a filter for clean water, and a latrine.

“There,” she says, pointing a finger above her new clean cookstove. “You can see how the smoke from the old stove stained the wall.”

In addition to the new clean stove, Pastrana, her husband and their daughters ages 7 and 1 received a latrine, an eco-filter for their water and a cement floor to replace their dirt one. By breathing cleaner air when they cook, using the latrine and no longer sitting and walking on dirt, the family is far less vulnerable to stomach diseases and diarrhea, major causes of childhood malnutrition in the region.

Through the project, the Varela family also received an eco-filter, a clean stove, a latrine and cement floor.

In addition to these improvements, each participating family works with project counselors to develop health and hygiene plans and nutrition plans for diversifying their diets with nutritious foods and keeping family members, especially young children, disease-free and healthy.

Growing for nutrition and resilience outside

For qualifying families, ACS-PROSASUR provides support not only inside homes but also outside in gardens and fields. Through assistance establishing small garden plots, accessing seeds to grow a variety of hearty, nutritious crops, and constructing water harvesting systems to weather drought, these families build resilience to food insecurity and expand their opportunities for income.

Carlos Ruiz, Chief of Party for ACS-PROSASUR, explains that this two-pronged approach provides families with wraparound support that can substantially change health and economic outcomes.

“A place that has the benefits provided by both components is guaranteed holistic wellbeing, greater productivity of food for the family because of appropriate agricultural techniques and will live in healthier environments,” he says.

Families work with project counselors to establish food security and nutrition plans as well as agricultural or non-agricultural business plans and gain the skills and knowledge to grow nutritious crops in garden plots.

The Pastrana family planted new crops this season with support from ACS-PROSASUR.

In Field Schools set up by the project in each community, participants learn and practice agriculture techniques they can use at home, and families can access healthy plants from a community garden. These are also used as sites for community health monitors to track children’s growth for signs of malnutrition.

“First of all, they gave me technical assistance to plant the garden, where I now have yuca and from which I harvested corn and sweet potato,” says Varela, who also received a rooster, six hens and a chicken coop.

The Pastrana family has established a small, raised vegetable garden where they grow corn, beans and sweet potato that will help them boost their nutrition. With a new rainwater harvesting system provided by the project, they can ensure their plants are watered and growing, even in the dry season.

A lasting transformation

As the Varela and Pastrana families begin to see the results of all these changes – yuca plants, clean water, healthier kids, income from crops – the project is working to ensure that participants and other families in the region have access to information to live healthier lives and achieve more economic stability.

A new radio program called “Vivir en el Campo” (“Living in the Countryside”) is dispatched every Saturday morning with segments on nutrition, healthy habits and farming techniques. And in Field Schools, community members can learn from their neighbors who have had hands-on training, and project field technicians who visit families can gain a better understanding of the context.

When ACS-PROSASUR comes to an end in 2021, the project aims to leave families with the tools, skills and knowledge to continue to thrive. The project is working with local governments to incorporate health and economic support activities into municipal development plans and to link vulnerable families to other municipal and international programs.

“First and foremost, it is important that families achieve nutritional and economic stability that allows for sustainable livelihoods where they currently live,” says Ruiz. “I truly believe that these sustainable strategies will ensure the continuation of the project’s achievements.”

With reporting by Amalia San Martin

Portable parks promote community in El Salvador

September 16, 2019

3 min read

By Ashley Williams

What is the size of two parking spots, can seat a group of friends and has the power to prevent crime and violence?

“Parklets” — known locally as Cuscatlánitos after the San Salvador park Cuscatlán — are vibrant public spaces that provide communities a meeting point. Though they are simple, these small parks are poised to make a powerful impact on strengthening vulnerable communities in El Salvador.

In their most basic form, they are slightly raised platforms with three low walls, but each one can be customized to meet the needs of the community. Some become classrooms, some are places for entrepreneurs to sell their goods and others become places to make art.

These new public spaces are supported by the USAID-funded Crime and Violence Prevention Project, which improves the ability of communities, municipalities and national institutions to prevent violent crime. El Salvador has one of the highest homicide rates in the world and has seen an uptick in reported robberies, assaults, rapes and missing persons cases in recent years.

A group of kids drawing on pieces of paper. — A group of kids turn a parklet into their own art studio. Photo by Gerson Lara.

The new parklets will live in the Tutunichapa, Atonal, La Asuncion and Santa Fe/La Paz communities, which surround Cuscatlán Park in the historic center of San Salvador. The parklets are part of a larger effort to make community members feel safe in and around their communities.

TOTEM, a New York–based urban development and design firm, designed the parklets as a system of interconnected spaces between Cuscatlán Park and surrounding communities by creating hyper-local and modular public spaces to foster community cohesion through entrepreneurship and participatory “place making.”

TOTEM Principal J. Manuel Mansylla says that while some of these communities are stigmatized and alienated, they are entrepreneurial and can thrive with the right support and platform, such as these parklets.

“During the dry season, when the demand to spend time outdoors increases, parklets may temporarily replace a few parking spots with neighborhood gathering places perfect for eating, reading, working, meeting a friend or taking a rest,” he says. “In San Salvador we added a new twist by using them as platforms to promote community members’ creative talents and ideas.”

TOTEM inaugurated the new public spaces with a pop-up market, called Festitlán, in the parking lot of the Cuscatlán Market. The design firm coordinated with local NGOs and government to develop this urban festival, which promoted the idea of building a city of “beautiful things” and showcased ways the city could be transformed through safe, dynamic public spaces.

Activities included workshops on urban gardening, dance and music shows by local artists, a participative mural, a community culinary market and more. For community members, these parks provide a renewed energy and a much-needed safe space to hang out.

“Thank you very much for taking us into account to be part of the Cuscatlánitos, said 19-year-old Nubia Velasco, from La Asunción, while enjoying her new Cuscatlanito. “We think it is a very cool way to spend time outside our homes, doing activities like these, celebrating and having fun.“

The data on what drives Central American migration in 5 quick facts

September 9, 2019

3 min read

By Jillian Slutzker

What’s causing people from the Northern Triangle of Central America to take the risky journey to the United States and elsewhere?

Based on extensive data mining and 2,400 in-person interviews, Creative’s newly released study, “Saliendo Adelante: Why migrants risk it all,” provides nuanced insight into the localized factors that influence one’s decision to migrate. It focuses on the 60 municipalities across El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala that account for more than half of the irregular migration from the region.

The study’s name, “Saliendo Adelante,” inspired by a Spanish phrase that connotes a feeling of resilience and a desire to move forward in life, was a sentiment echoed by many of the 2,400 individuals interviewed as part of this research.

With this local-level data, development programming can more effectively address the specific determinants that shape a person’s decision to make the risky, even dangerous, journey north.

Get five quick facts from the study below! To learn more, visit https://www.saliendo-adelante.com/.

1. Who intends to migrate?

At the national level, Creative’s study revealed that 33 percent of Hondurans intend to migrate, while 24 percent of Salvadorans intend to, followed by 18 percent of Guatemalans. The majority of these migrants are coming from just 60 municipalities in the Northern Triangle.

2. Economics is the primary driver

Overall, economic concerns are by far the most significant driving factor for migrants from the Northern Triangle. The study showed that economic concerns—including unemployment, household earnings under $400 per month and being unable to make ends meet, and a pessimistic economic outlook—are the primary statistically significant determinants for 71 percent of Guatemalans who intend to migrate, 67 percent of Hondurans who intend to and 50 percent of Salvadorans who do.

Those whose households earn less than $400 a month and who cannot make ends meet are 1.25 times more likely to consider migrating. More than one-third of survey respondents reported household earnings under the $400 line and said they could not make ends meet.

3. Being victimized makes you 1.5 more likely to migrate

Regionally, having been a victim of a crime or having a family member or someone else close to you who has been makes an individual 1.5 times more likely to consider migrating.

Nearly one-third of survey respondents who have considered migrating from Honduras have had a family member or close friend murdered. Youth tend to be affected even more by victimization in their decision to migrate. In El Salvador, 1 in 4 young women aged 18 to 29 who intends to migrate has seen a family member or close friend murdered. In Honduras, 65 percent of young men who intend to migrate have been robbed on the street.

4. More than 1/3 of youth in the Northern Triangle plan to migrate

Across the three countries, on average 36.7 percent of youth intends to migrate.

In fact, respondents 18 to 29 years old are more than twice as likely to consider migrating than adults aged 30 and older. The data from Honduras is particularly stark: 46 percent of youth from the municipalities surveyed intend to migrate, compared to 28 percent of older adults.

Youth are exposed to factors at different rates from adults, and in some cases, react differently to those factors. According to the survey, Honduran young women intend to migrate more than young men. This is not the case in the other countries where young men were found to have higher intentions to migrate.

5. Reuniting with relatives not a large pull

Transnational ties – defined here as existence of family in the U.S., receipt of remittances, and prior migration to the U.S. – is a pull factor in the migration equation, but it is far less impactful than economics and victimization. Only 3 percent of survey respondents cited reuniting with relatives as their primary reason for wanting to migrate.

However, in the larger regional context, a culture of migration has been and continues to be solidified through the generations. Nearly two-thirds of all survey respondents have a relative living abroad, with 75 percent of those relatives have lived in the U.S. for 10 years or more.

Yet statistical analysis shows that simply having a family member in the U.S. is not a differentiating factor between those who intend to migrate and those who don’t, despite the large number of people who reported family ties.

To read more about the study, explore the data and hear migrants’ stories, visit: https://www.saliendo-adelante.com/