ADEJUC does not provide services to street children; rather, it encourages the political participation of disadvantaged children throughout the country. It is, in fact, an alliance, or perhaps a network, of dozens of youth groups working for social change and human rights in urban and rural areas. Projects include bringing running water to poor villages, encouraging sustainable agriculture, general development, and others; these programs channel other goals, from responses to domestic violence to human rights monitoring and political action.
During the civil war, locals often confused ADEJUC with the guerrilla, largely because the program helped refugees and war wounded; fortunately, this confusion has now ended, and many more youth are willing to participate.
The model goes like this: youth from a successful ADEJUC program travel to a neighboring town or neighborhood to recruit others. With the help of adults in the ADEJUC main office, they organize a youth group and discover the needs of the community, then plan a way to solve the problems. Over the course of the next five years, ADEJUC is intimately invloved in the new program, with money, advice, and direct management. After that time, the adults begin to withdraw, leaving the local program in a self-sustainable state. ADEJUC continues to provide limited support, but within several years, they expect the local program to be independent.
While engaged in the direct development work, youth also pressure local mayors and city councils to enact the Convention on the Rights of the Child into law. They have been very successful in this project; in many villages, important aspects of the convention are now law. Other groups have begun radio stations in order to get their message across; while others have encouraged youth-run small businesses (like the Gameen Bank).
In addition to adult management, ADEJUC is run by an elected group of youth (Youth Board of Directors). They educate each other on questions of politics, gender, and development, then chose priorities for the agency. ADEJUC runs workshops to teach new leaders how to organize in new towns, how to deal with cultural differences, etc. New leaders are chosen by other youth. 140 youth serve on the coordinating committee; at least 4000 (from 11-17) participate in some aspect of ADEJUC.
ADEJUC also works with parents and with women, where they have discovered a problem with dependence on institutions. Fortunatelty, this is not the case with children. In fact, youth are often so excited about independence that they have to be held back and reminded of the realities of funding and politics.
ADEJUC (Asociación para el Desarollo Juvenil Comunitario)
adejucsc@guate.net
360 6252 or 334 2338 or 332 6212; fax 485 0366
Amílcar Ordóñez
9 Avenida 32-01 Zona 11
Colonia Las Charcas
Guatemala
Guatemala
