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Tackling Gang Violence Head-on

Protecting Youth and Promoting Peace
Honduras | 2018
| Building Resillient Communities
|

Grave Risks

At an average of 60 deaths per 100,000, Honduras has one of the highest murder rates in the world.

In some parts of the country, it can be more than double that already staggering rate. Young people are both the victims of crime and can be perpetrators as well. Children as young as 8 years old are being identified as “at risk” for gang recruitment. Migration, poverty, and violence often break up families, making it hard for them to provide the structure and supervision young people need in areas plagued by gangs to avoid being lured into a cycle of violence and crime.

70,000

young people

have benefitted from vocational training, tutoring, and access to a safe space

Going Where the Gangs Are

Realizing that youth cannot escape gang life without alternative opportunities and the support of those closest to them, Creative Associates International has partnered with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to transform families and communities.

Working with USAID under a previous program called Alianza Joven (“Youth Alliance”), Creative established community outreach centers that provide a haven from the allure of gangs through access to safe space, job training, and tutoring. Focusing on youth and families who need individualized support, Creative has established a family-centered counseling program to strengthen protective factors in the home and reduce risk for gang-joining. Adapting a highly successful diagnostic tool first developed in Los Angeles, the USAID-funded Proponte Más program identifies youth at a high level of risk for engaging with gangs and violence by assessing them across a series of individual, family, and peer factors. With this information, trained counselors work with both youth and their families to change the behaviors and strengthen the entire family system.

Impact

Through more than 200 USAID-funded outreach centers across a range of programs in Central America, over 70,000 young people have benefitted from vocational training, tutoring, and access to safe space.

Through the Proponte Más program, Creative Associates International has to date reached more than 440 at-risk youth with this innovative family counseling program in five of Honduras’ most violent cities. The model has shown impressive success, with 72 percent of program participants showing a significant reduction in risk factors that places them below the “at risk” threshold altogether.

How Public-Private Partnerships Are Tackling the World’s Toughest Challenges
Over the last 25 years, American innovation and assistance has helped to cut extreme poverty in half and save millions of lives around the world. But that impact isn’t only seen abroad – the return on investment is also unmatched here at home. The State Department, USAID, and America’s development agencies are engaging new partners, catalyzing private sector resources, and leading new approaches to solve pressing global challenges in areas such as health, agriculture, and energy – creating new forms of public-private partnerships that maximize taxpayer dollars and increase our nation’s security and prosperity.

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