[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text][/vc_column_text][/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]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]
Panama City – Ten stories up, children pause their soccer scrimmage to peek over the railing-less roof of a colossal teal apartment building. A naked man is visible from a fourth-floor window. Behind, a river serves as a haven for drug users, and a repository for the weapons gang members toss out of windows when the police show up.
This is the center of Curundú, a Panama City neighborhood of 16,000 where the homicide rate at one point reached 151 per 1,000— more than 15 times the “epidemic” level as determined by the World Health Organization.
The Panamanian government is intent on lowering rates of violent crime in the country, and it’s changing the way it engages with neighborhoods like this one. With support from Creative Associates International’s Youth at Risk Program, known locally as Alcance Positivo, there is a new focus on community policing and youth engagement.
In fact the police are here today, somewhere in the bare-wire bowels of this massive 1200-apartment complex. They are not responding to anything, says Officer Teodoro Gomez. “Just talking.”
With patient emphasis on getting to know community members and working with them to solve problems, Gomez reports that crime here has gone noticeably down, and switched to mostly minor offenses.
Kids who never used to come out to play for fear of getting shot today scoot happily around a rusted playground in the courtyard.
They are also willing to walk, sometimes with police protection, to one of two nearby Youth Outreach Centers sponsored by Creative, local churches and NGOs and private companies.
Some of the Centers, like the Calidonia Outreach Center run by Pastor Andreas Fischer and his wife Kathy, have found especially inventive ways to engage them.
Children and teens come here to play ping-pong, soccer, foosball and karate, get help with homework and learn English and computer skills.
They also get to be movie stars.
The Fischers lead 10 or 12 teenagers at a time to write, produce, film and star in their own self-directed videos. Kids from warring neighborhoods collaborate on scripts, scout for locations and props and recruit extras together. After it’s edited, they put on a big opening night and invite the community to watch the final product.
“We do it to give the kids a voice of their own so they can express what they live,” says Pastor Fischer. “We feel it’s important for those kids that they have a success story to talk about.”
The last time he did an open air screening at night, residents screamed so loudly he had to replay the movie a second time after they’d calmed down.
The Calidonia Youth Outreach Center is in a gang-neutral zone at the confluence of several poor, violent neighborhoods including Curundú. That means kids don’t have to cross gang lines to get there. But it also means the Fischers are working with young people who need a tremendous amount of support.
For many of the teenagers, working on the film is the first time they take on a project and actually complete it.
“We believe that any person, any teenager in any circumstance, can change. They all have a future. They all have talents,” says Fischer. “We want to help them realize who they are and separate their thinking from the circumstances that they live in.”
The Fischers are also trying to deliver that message to young children.
The “esperanza” truck—inviting enough given its previous life as an ice cream truck—has doors that spring open to reveal a stage. Every Sunday, about 25 volunteers and staff from the Calidonia Outreach Center visit vulnerable communities, hand out snacksand put on puppet and clown shows that instill positive values in young children.
“It’s important to teach those kids even though they live in difficult neighborhoods, to start thinking positive about themselves, about their abilities, their talents and their future,” says Pastor Fischer.
In the first four months, more than 3,500 kids came to watch the shows.
“It’s growing everywhere we go,” says Pastor Fischer. “They wait for us. They know us. Every time I go somewhere: ‘Hey, where’s the truck? Where are the clowns?’”
On this day the clowns—who are known, when plain-faced and wigless, as Leopolido Kennion and his wife Anayansi– are back at the Outreach Center working on next Sunday’s script, and practicing with the other puppet volunteers.
There’s a perfectly-pitched mouse, a loud winking pig and several big-mouthed people-puppets who nod along with the kid-friendly dialogue.
They know children will listen, mouths agape, to a puppet or a clown much faster than they’ll listen to a Pastor. And in places like Curundú, those messages of friendship and future can’t come soon enough.[/vc_column_text][/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]
Thousands of dedicated delegates this week called for a scaled-up HIV response to save lives at the 20th International AIDS Conference in Melbourne, Australia. The five-day conference, themed “Stepping Up the Pace,” attracted 12,000 delegates, who discussed and debated the latest HIV research and programmatic developments, working to rapidly roll out new interventions to achieve an AIDS-free generation.
In an article I co-authored in a special supplement to the Journal of AIDS, which was released at the Conference, I call for better strategies to help HIV-positive moms succeed in their efforts to protect their infants and live healthy lives with HIV.
The article urges health and development practitioners to take a more nuanced and patient-sensitive approach to treating and supporting HIV-positive pregnant women, instead of relying on more traditional clinical and medical models.
For example, using community health workers or peers as liaisons between people living with HIV and health care providers, and making care less disjointed by incorporating social services, child protection and education into packages of client-responsive services.
The improved approach would attract more mothers to seek out and stay in care, and adhere to treatment, improving their own lives and saving those of their children by preventing HIV transmission.
The Melbourne conference’s call for decreased HIV stigma and discrimination is also well in line with recent initiatives at Creative.
A newly-completed research study in Uganda, Ethiopia and Mozambique conducted by Susan Rogers, a Senior Associate in Design, Monitoring and Evaluation, examined how gender and internal stigma around one’s own perception of their HIV status affected disclosure. This is critical research, as studies demonstrate that the more individuals disclose their HIV status to their partners, the more likely they are to seek treatment.
Susan also conducted research in Jamaica and the Bahamas with healthcare and social service providers. She found that key affected populations in their care were experiencing “layered stigma”—HIV–related stigma combined with stigma toward marginalized groups. Findings from Susan’s study were published last month in the journal AIDS Care.
The message in these articles resonates with Creative’s longstanding work on HIV prevention. Since 1996, Creative has managed more than 20 projects related to HIV or Orphans and Vulnerable Children, and now manages more than $18 million in President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) funding in Africa.
By harnessing education to prevent HIV and link children to health services and policy reform, our programs in Uganda, Zambia, Nigeria and elsewhere have addressed critical structural factors contributing to young girls’ vulnerability to HIV through school drop-out prevention programs and psychosocial support for vulnerable children.
Throughout these programs, Creative is taking the integrated approach that I argued for in my article, and about whose benefits health and development experts are increasingly vocal.
Sara Melillo is Creative’s Management Associate for Health
It happened the first time in Honduras, where my organization had sent me to document programmatic success. We had rushed around all day, flinging wires and lights around, lugging our cameras and backpacks from interview to interview, scribbling notes and shaking hands. When we collapsed for lunch at 3:30 we were exhausted. And there it was. Right across the street. With all of its 31 flavors. A Baskin Robbins. The kind of American chain I had promised myself I would never, ever patronize on a trip to another country.
A few months later, I was in Panama. And so was a Subway. I don’t know how to say “sandwich artist” in Spanish but I listened to the man in front of me say “con todo” as he gestured toward the row of excruciatingly familiar washed-out tomato slices and leaking pickles. So I said it too, and walked away with the sinking, guilty sensation that I was having the same groaning sandwich I might have had on any Wednesday in my hometown.
What was I becoming? I had gone to so many countries where I railed against being a tourist, and sought instead to be a traveler. Where I insisted on experiencing the culture, the food and the people even at some cost to my ego, wallet and digestive tract.
And yet here I was after lunch, in a taxi in a country I might never return to, listening to the driver tell me the Panama Canal was five minutes away and hearing myself respond, “Just keep going, we don’t have time for that.”
As a communications writer for an international development organization, I love that my job lets me occasionally travel the world. And yet it’s not the kind of traveling I love.
Instead of following a gap-toothed stranger through the curling stone streets of Lamu, Kenya to find the house of the man who sells heart-shaped labania, I check my watch from the backseat of a seatbeltless sedan and calculate the minutes until we are officially late to a meeting.
Instead of playing a game of pick-up soccer with barefoot neighborhood kids, I’m silently urging the photographer to hurry up and capture their carefree smiles for the cover of our next case study.
As I rush around checking items off my to-do list, I rarely get the chance to cross things off my bucket list.
But maybe I’ve been writing down the wrong things. Sure, on that trip to Honduras, I never got to snorkel in Roatán or see the Mayan ruins near Copán. But I laughed with my local film crew over a bean-and-mayonnaise sandwich I didn’t quite mean to order, and felt inspired as I followed a grandmother around the barrio she was trying to save from gang violence.
I never got the chance to buy any of the famous metalwork when I went on a work trip to Haiti. But a local woman taught me all the gestures to a lilting folk song as we motored a small fishing boat into the Atlantic, and my mouth filled with decadent sweetness as I squished a fresh chunk of honeycomb that a young beekeeper slid to me atop his machete.
I never did visit the Panama Canal. I guess I’ll have to go back.
And when I do, these frantic trips spent focused on work will allow me to bring a deeper understanding than I would have gained from trying to find the most authentic experience on my own.
I’ll know that just around the corner a bunch of kids whose parents are in opposing gangs are playing a ping pong tournament together, and learning about nutrition from a volunteer husband-and-wife duo who dress up as clowns.
I’ll know that there’s an old woman in knee socks who comes to feed the pigeons out of a floppy woven basket in the square in front of the Iglesia de los Delores, and that a group of retired soccer referees meet on the Parque Central benches every Thursday morning to gab.
And I’ll know that when I get sick of bean and mayonnaise sandwiches, or whatever other local delicacy I’ve ruthlessly hunted down, and when doing my job has left me haggard and overheated, there will probably be a Baskin Robbins just around the corner.
By Jennifer Brookland
[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text][/vc_column_text][/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]
[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]
The Crime & Violence Prevention Project was launched on Tuesday, April 23rd in Nejapa, El Salvador with special guests: Sergio Vladimir Quijada, Mayor of Nejapa; David Munguia Payes, Minister of Justice & Security; Mari Carmen Aponte, US Ambassador to El Salvador; Kirk Dahlgreen, USAID Mission Director and Harold Sibaja, Project Director.
This project will build on USAID and Creative’s previous prevention programs in Central America with the aim of increasing citizen safety in El Salvador. Creative will work to support the Government of El Salvador’s national level prevention efforts, as well as the expansion of municipal-led crime and violence prevention programming.
We look forward to working with USAID El Salvador, our partners: Institute for Research and Development for Violence Prevention and Social Coexistence (CISALVA) , the Foundation for the Support of Municipalities of El Salvador (FUNDAMUNI) and a number of local stakeholders toward reducing the incidence of crime and violence in El Salvador. More important we look forward to working with Salvadorean youth so they can live in a better place and achieve their dreams!
For more photos, visit our Facebook page.[/vc_column_text][/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]
[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]
For one evening in Honduras, neighborhood volunteers were recognized as community heroes at an event that championed those who give back in some of the most challenging environments.
Three of the seven awarded for their service by U.S. Ambassador Lisa Kubiske are participants in Creative Associates International’s Alianza Joven Honduras program, which is supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Alianza Joven Honduras uses grants and technical assistance to enable the government, private sector and affected communities to address violence. In Honduras, it established 44 Youth Outreach Centers where children find support, mentoring and opportunities to give back.
At the June 5 awards ceremony, Edwin Maradiaga was awarded for his volunteer work teaching children basic computer skills at one of these centers in Choloma, a community located near the city of San Pedro Sula.
“I know some things about information technology,” he said in another video about his volunteer work. “I’m going to teach the little that I know to the kids in order for them to learn a little bit more…”
At 20 years old, Maradiaga won the hero award for the youth category, which was open to volunteers aged 14 to 24 who demonstrated exceptional mentoring, motivational skills and/or artistic talent in support of regional security and development activities.
Warrior Crow, a dance troupe from San Pedro Sula and Chamelecon, performed at the event after winning the Group award, given to a collective that showed commitment to youth, communities or a specific risk factor through services, advocacy or artistic talent.
Twelve year old Graciela lives with her two younger sisters and great-grandmother in the rough Honduran community of Zapote Norte. Graciela’s father was a taxi driver who was murdered. Graciela’s mother, a victim of violence, left the family and cannot be found. Graciela’s grandmother moved to the United States and sends money to the family.
The pre-teen is eager to be reunited with her grandmother.
This true story is typical of what Vice President Biden will hear when he meets Friday with leaders of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to discuss the acute humanitarian crisis of unaccompanied minors entering the United States—of which nearly 60,000 have been apprehended this year, 10 times more than in 2011.
The vast majority of these minors, some as young as 4 years old, are making this life-threatening trip through a network of smugglers and without other family members.
It is a growing crisis and a transnational problem on which leaders must collaborate for a comprehensive and compassionate strategy.
While news coverage and the public debate have focused primarily on the children’s perilous journey and the effects of overcrowding in US border detention centers, little attention has been paid to the so-called “push” factors that are causing them to travel north.
The U.S. Agency for International Development recently funded a series of focus groups in Honduras and El Salvador with youth who were at-risk of migration—such as Graciela—to determine some of the “push” and “pull” factors that are causing minors to risk migrating to the United States. While they validated what we know through our work with local governments and youth, it revealed a number of surprises.
[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]
Jun. 12, 2014 – Microsoft Corp. and Creative Associates International are partnering to provide thousands of at-risk youth in El Salvador with access to software and technology training as an alternative to the draw of gangs.
“Microsoft’s involvement will have a significant, positive affect on youth in gang-infested areas of El Salvador,” says Charito Kruvant, President and CEO of Creative. “We appreciate the company’s support of our crime-prevention work and the role youth play in creating a safer, better future for their communities.”
Using Creative’s network of 77 Youth Outreach Centers in El Salvador, Microsoft will outfit 800 computers with educational software applications, including Office 365, Microsoft Mathematics 4.0, Microsoft Worldwide Telescope and more, that will benefit approximately 25,000 youth. With support from local vendors, Microsoft will train 130 information technology coordinators to use the platform.
Microsoft’s support amounts to $2.94 million.
The company will also support 13 Salvadoran IT academies with training for IT coordinators, a full teaching technology curriculum and learning tools that help young people to develop marketable skills.
Creative’s El Salvador Violence and Crime Prevention Program—which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development—is addressing the country’s troubling levels of violence by improving the ability of communities, municipalities and national institutions to address violent crime.
Creative’s community based centers provide at-risk youth with a safe space where they can receive academic tutoring, improve their computer literacy, learn English and find opportunities for recreation.
Throughout Central America, Creative has established more than 115 Youth Outreach Centers, with more planned in vulnerable communities.
U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador, Mari Carmen Aponte, praised the agreement between Creative and Microsoft.
“I am extremely pleased to formalize this agreement with an important private sector partner,” U.S. Ambassador Aponte said during the signing ceremony of the Memorandum of Understanding. “Precisely, under the Partnership for Growth, we encourage all sectors to join in violence prevention actions to increase the security and prosperity of thousands of Salvadorian citizens.”
Microsoft will support the project through its YouthSpark initiative, a global corporate citizenship program that empowers young people to imagine and develop their potential and connects them to further opportunities in education, employment and entrepreneurship. (http://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship/en-us/youthspark/)
Gracia Rosi, General Manager of Microsoft El Salvador, signed of the memorandum of understanding for her company.
“It is important to create areas of mutual cooperation with various types of institutions, who seek from their context and institutions to maximize the development of El Salvador,” Rosi said. “Thus, we recognize that we must join in the institutional efforts promoted by USAID, and in particular, we must support those initiatives that seek to provide real opportunities for the Salvadorian youth to reach their goals, their development, vocational training and skills in information technology.”
About Creative Associates International
Creative Associates International works with underserved communities by sharing expertise and experience in education, economic growth, governance and transitions from conflict to peace. Creative is the second-largest company owned by women that works with the U.S. government.
Based in Washington, D.C., Creative currently has projects in more than 15 countries. Since 1977, it has worked in 85 countries and on nearly every continent. Recognized for its ability to work rapidly, flexibly and effectively in conflictive environments, Creative is committed to generating long-term sustainable solutions to complex development problems.
[/vc_column_text][/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]
Today, millions of fans from all corners of the world will enjoy one of the most anticipated occasions to whip the masses into a frenzy every four years.
The streets of Brazil will be covered with yellow and green, batucadas and berimbaus will be playing, hearts will beat faster, faces will be painted, flags and signs will wave and national colors proudly worn.
The sound of a whistle will send 22 men in a field running and fighting to send a ball into a 7.32 meters wide by 2.44 meters high net. Brazil’s most modern and cosmopolitan city, Sao Paolo, will host the much-anticipated FIFA World Cup, with the first match—between home team Brazil and Croatia—on Thursday, June 12.
Fútbol (soccer), “the beautiful game,” is considered the most popular sport globally. The game touches on issues of nationalism and identity; a common human experience shared by spectators from many cultures.
It seems like being happy is en vogue in the international media these days. From the crackdown on Iranian youth making a video to Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” to various indices ranking the level of happiness of people living in the countries around the world, the debate over happiness is on.
Surprisingly (or not) the recent indices come up with somewhat different sets of rankings. To my joy, the latest poll by Gallup, done with 1,500 people from each of 138 countries, put four of the places I have lived or worked among the top 10 happiest places in the world (Panama, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala).
The odd juxtaposition is that these are also four countries that have been part of Creative’s joint programming with USAID that works to reduce the high levels of violence.
How does that mesh – when the people interviewed from a variety of income levels expressed high levels of “enjoyment,” “laughing or smiling a lot” and feeling “well-rested,” while also living in three of the countries (El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala) with the highest murder rates globally?
I was surprised with such positive responses from Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Hondurans to the happiness surveys given high level of gang violence and extortion by gangs. Notably, violence likely contributed to the fact that the least happy people according to this year’s survey, understandably so, are Syrians, Chadians and Yemenis.