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Outreach Centers Break the Pull of Gang Life
FrontLines - March 2010
By Angela Rucker
LOURDE S, El Salvador—
Gang members aren’t allowed
inside the youth outreach centers
USAID helped establish in El Salvador—
but they do drop their kids
off to join in the activities inside.
Such is the pull—and the
promise—of the outreach centers
located in the middle of
some of the toughest neighborhoods
in the country.
“I was walking around with
an active gang member and I
asked him if he was going to the
center,” said Juan José Hernández
of Creative Associates International
Inc., which is carrying
out the USAID-funded project.
“He said, ‘No way, I am from
the street.’”
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Roberto Martinez is the coordinator at
El Salvador’s Lourdes Outreach Center,
which gives local children a place to go and
an alternative to gang life.
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That same gangbanger, however,
insisted that his 3-year-old
would some day attend. “That
really touched me,” Hernandez
said.
The outreach centers offer
refuge from gang life and opportunities
for educational and recreational
activities. There are
five in El Salvador, part of a network
of 25 centers here and in
Guatemala and Honduras.
Participants are
between the ages of
9 and 21, and are
either ex-gang
members (gang
recruitment can
start as early as age
7) or children who
are at risk of joining
a gang. Each center
provides classes
such as: information
technology,
computer literacy, crafts, baking,
job training, career advice, English,
and music. They are also a
place to hang out.
“Our goal is that this is a second
home for them, where they
can learn, have fun, express
themselves,” said Roberto Martinez,
29, the youthful coordinator
of the Lourdes Outreach
Center. “Sometimes we need to
be their fathers, uncles, older
brothers.”
The Lourdes center is part of
the Regional Youth Alliance program,
a joint effort between
USAID and the Central American
Integration System, or
SICA, started in 2008 to address
the gang problem.
Each center costs about
$18,000 a year for the salary of a
single coordinator and operating
costs. The community furnishes
the center’s home—usually a
church or unused building—that
should be no farther than a
15-minute walk for the young
people who will use it. Teachers
at the centers are all volunteers,
mostly local community members
and university students.
Close to 90 percent of the
community partners in the outreach
centers are faith-based
since religious institutions are
widely respected, even by gang
members.
Salvador Stadthagen, the
Regional Youth Alliance program
director, said that “in these
communities that have poverty
and insecurity, which is a terrible
combination, you come to realize
the institution is churches.”
Gang life is like a prison,
Stadthagen said. Once kids join,
it is hard to step back with baggage
like wicked reputations and
larger-than-life tattoos. And
many don’t want to go back to
their pre-gang lives.
Gang members live fast, have
money, and demand respect—
even if they get it through executions
and extortion. Some estimates
suggest there are at least
25,000 gang members in the
country and several thousand
more outside the country, primarily
in the United States.
Family life is not an alternative
for some. UNICEF estimates
70 percent of children in
El Salvador have been abused in
their homes. Add in poverty, a
condition that describes about
half the country’s children, and
“the pull for the gang member is
very strong,” Stadthagen said.
Henry Monroy, 17, is a volunteer
at the center and also
attends some of the classes
there. In April, he plans to
enroll in a distance learning
program that will allow him to
complete his secondary education—
he is at the seventh grade
level now. He is using the Internet
at Lourdes to download
study materials.
His story is similar to that of
other young people who were at
the center on a sunny Saturday
morning.
“I didn’t have anything fun to
do,” Henry said. “I have many
family problems and then I
learned about this center.
“It’s beautiful; it’s like a second
home,” he said.
Despite its well-equipped
computer room, there has been
no crime at Lourdes. “We
haven’t had any robberies. It
belongs to the community,”
Stadthagen said.
USAID wants to open 10
more in the region. The Agency
has spent $2.8 million on the
initiative so far. The centers are
partially funded by the Central
American Regional Security
Initiative.
Organizers also hope to
expand the reach of the centers
by creating youth-run microenterprises,
for example, selling
the goods made in cooking
classes.
★
FrontLines writer Angela Rucker wrote this series of articles following a trip to El Salvador in January. All photos by Angela Rucker.
FrontLines is published
by the Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs
U.S. Agency for International Development
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Material should be submitted
by mail to Editor, FrontLines, USAID,
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