Youth Empowerment

Youths and mentors in an Impact group play a group-building game.

Youth involved in the Vocational Training program learn to fix motorcycles.

Making impoverished urban neighborhoods in Honduras safer is a major priority for AJS. The Peace & Justice and Rescate Projects, which help poor victims of violent crime achieve justice through Honduras' law-enforcement system, is one successful and important aspect of that work. But equally important is our work with at-risk youth. “We can make a neighborhood safer and healthier for a certain amount of time by prosecuting people who are robbing, killing, or raping others. But children and young people in these neighborhoods will become violent as they get older unless they are given more opportunities to grow and contribute positively to the community,” says Peace & Justice lawyer Luis.

To this end, AJS supports work with at-risk youths in three of the poorest and most violent neighborhoods in Tegucigalpa. Staff and volunteers from the Gideon Project  have played a key role in AJS's youth-empowerment projects.

"At-Risk" Youth
Many organizations working in Honduras claim to work with "at-risk" youth. But few use as a rigorous a definition as AJS. In order to participate in AJS's programs, youths must not only live in poor neighborhoods--they must be neither working nor enrolled in school, a situation which truly puts them at high risk of filling up their time with substance abuse and gang activities.

Youth Empowerment Programs

• Impact Groups
  AJS currently supports eight youth groups, comprising over 120 at-risk youths, that use the Impact methodology, a system pioneered by the New Horizons Foundation in Romania that uses service learning, group-building games, and stories to empower young people to become leaders in the transformation and improvement of their communities. Check out this gallery of photos from Impact Group meetings and this article and photo gallery from a recent soccer tournament organized by AJS Impact clubs.
• Vocational Training
  Through a project co-sponsored by the United Nations, in 2009 Gideon Project staff helped enroll 65 youths from poor neighborhoods in courses in auto-painting, auto-mechanics, commercial cooking and baking, and more, offered by a government-run vocational training school, INFOP. Despite the youths' background--previously they had neither been studying nor working--99% graduated from the course last November. Several have already found employment using their new skills, and the Tegucigalpa city government has pledged to find jobs for the rest. The Gideon Project has helped enroll a new group of youths in these classes for 2010, and expects similarly positive results! Check out this gallery of photos and interviews with vocational training course graduates.

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