El Salvador / Guatemala / Nicaragua / Honduras

Youth employment training, gang prevention, and community construction are the focus of this regional program to replicate YouthBuild programs in these four countries. Six implementing partners have completed their first cycles of YouthBuild implementation. A second phase of expansion to 12 locations is being planned for the summer of 2011. Since 2007, YouthBuild International has worked with Catholic Relief Services and a four-country (El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras) network of six NGO implementing partners to adapt the YouthBuild model. In these countries, youth unemployment is 1.6 to 3 times the national average for adults, and nearly half of all youth abandon school before sixth grade.

With initial support from the Citi Foundation, YBI ran two pilot projects in Guatemala and Nicaragua. The programs’ strong outcomes facilitated the expansion to an additional two countries and six sites, with funding provided by the entra21 program of the Inter-American Development Bank. An independent evaluation of these programs found that the “Jovenes Constructores Project… can be considered a space for real and effective opportunities for youth with connections to gangs and at-risk youth.”

In El Salvador, USAID provided two contracts to expand the model to 10 more sites, including a pilot that would position the model as re-entry alternative for youth exiting the prison system in San Salvador. A grant from the Open Society Institute will enable the further adaptation of the San Salvador YouthBuild model to work more effectively with gang-involved young people.