CWS Regional Program on Children and Youth – Brazil, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Uruguay
Brazil--Young women enjoy dance class. Photo: Paul Jeffrey/ACT |
Projeto Meninos y Meninas da Rua (PMMR) -- Brazil
Proyecto Caminante -- Dominican Republic
Instituto de Promocion Humana(INPRHU) -- Nicaragua
Asociacion Civil Gurises Unidos -- Uruguay
Church World Service's Regional Program on Vulnerable Children and Youth focuses on urban poor children and youth who are at great risk. These are street and working children, and child victims or potential victims of sexual abuse and exploitation. Every day, some of the most basic rights of many children and youth in Latin America and the Caribbean (as defined in the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child) are violated and/or not well protected.
The program in the four countries works to educate and mobilize governments, communities, and families to respect, promote, and protect children’s rights, and to provide vulnerable children with opportunities to move out of extreme poverty and escape violent situations.
In Brazil, CWS partner PMMR is active in two of São Paulo's low-income neighborhoods integrating excluded youngsters aged 7 to 17 into society, developing educational outlets and stimulating children to build new social relationships. The youngsters live and/or work in the streets, where they are vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitation, drug trafficking, and violence.
In the community of Boca Chica, Dominican Republic, Proyecto Caminante is advocating against sex-related tourism and child prostitution. Caminante promotes policy changes within national and city governments on the rights of children and youth, and provides training, from teaching parenting skills to educating small business owners on how to better protect and/or interact with street children.
CWS Nicaragua partner INPRHU is working with 350 young people ages 10-18, their parents, and others in the community and the government, on measures to prevent and eradicate commercial sexual exploitation of children working in five markets and two poor barrios of the capital, Managua. INPRHU is also providing girl victims of sexual abuse and exploitation care and counseling in a safe environment.
Gurises Unidos (United Children), a long-time CWS partner, is assisting 30 children and adolescents and their families who labor as garbage collectors in the low-income Malvin Norte area of Montevideo, Uruguay. Gurises is helping the families to find employment alternatives other than garbage collecting by providing the parents with vocational training and other strategies to improve their lives.
This program marks a first for CWS, working with a group of partners in a coordinated, integrated, regional, multi-year, and multi-national manner around children at risk in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Activities common to the program in all four countries may include emergency food assistance, health care, recreational opportunities, after-school programs, legal assistance, counseling, and classes on parenting and life-skills.
Recognizing the vital role adults play in any program impacting youth, the CWS program works with the young people's families and relatives, neighbors and host communities, teachers and school principals. It also involves key community-based organizations and government agencies (clinics, police, juvenile justice system), elected officials, the religious community, and the media.
During 2007, the program is placing heavy emphasis on creating, expanding, and upgrading local capacity to identify and respond to major risks affecting their children and youth.
Support for Church World Service helps make this program possible.
Updated 3/1/07
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