Spring 2008 Update on YAP's Sister Agency in Guatemala

"The Street Children's Movement" (Movimiento)

Last month, YAP sent a three-person team to Guatemala to show solidarity and support for Carlos Toledo and his dedicated work with street children and at-risk youth via "Movimiento". Carlos continues to withstand financial strains, harassment by the police, and being labeled a criminal by the Guatemalan courts as a result of his advocacy for street children. Carlos and Movimiento are mourning the loss of Carlos' assistant director and two youths living at the Movimiento shelter, murdered as a consequence of their human rights activism. This debilitating loss to Movimiento led to the formation of a North American YAP team that traveled to Guatemala to buoy Carlos and demonstrate YAP's full support of Movimiento. CEO Jeff Fleischer was joined by Monmouth International graduate student Katy Holland and YAP Dauphin County Family Clinic therapist Diana Matteson. The YAP team worked alongside Movimiento staff and volunteers, getting to know the young people served by Movimiento, evaluating program needs, and facilitating meetings to assist Carlos in strengthening existing and pursuing new relationships with human rights and non-governmental organizations. Movimiento has a 15-year history of collaborating with YAP, sharing core YAP principles such as a strength-based approach, individualized service plans, and a willingness to work with youth rejected by other organizations and the community itself.

What the YAP team discovered was a continued commitment by Carlos and his workers - despite the murders of Movimiento staff and children - to Guatemala's cast aside and most troubled youths, as well as a great many needs that must be met for Movimiento to reach its full potential. Carlos has begun supporting a new school in Zona 18, a marginal neighborhood perched on the side of a mountain in Guatemala City, metering out a precarious existence and vulnerable to the whims of stormy weather and gang violence. The school in Zona 18 provides an education to children ages 5 to 13 who must work to help support their families and, thus, are refused entrance into the Guatemalan public school system. The school is well appreciated by the Zona 18 community with neighbors sewing donated fabric into school uniforms for the children and doing what they can. However, the walls of the school are made with aluminum siding with plastic tarps for a roof. The rainy season stretches from May through October in Guatemala, and the structural stability of the school is in question. The Zona 18 School is one example of Movimiento identifying a need and stepping up to meet it, albeit stretching resources to do so.

Site visits were interspersed with meetings. A pivotal meeting took place in a local juvenile detention center where the YAP team advocated for Carlos. The YAP delegation proposed the inclusion of members of Movimiento within the juvenile detention centers in Guatemala City to augment existing sparse rehabilitative programming. The YAP coalition effectively presented the Movimiento approach as a proven method for a reduced recidivism rate at the detention center thus gaining an audience two days later with the Secretary of Social Services at the Ministry of Justice. Since returning to the US, the YAP team has been assisting Carlos with creating an effective proposal. If this proposal is accepted, it will mark the first time Carlos and Movimiento will have the support of and recognition by the Guatemalan government.

On the final evening in Guatemala, the YAP delegation joined Carlos and the Movimiento team doing outreach on the streets of Guatemala City, the heart of Carlos' work from which Movimiento was conceived. Weary children rushed out of the shadows to surround Carlos and the Movimiento team, eager for companionship and compassion, desperate for the opportunity to try on the cloak of human dignity offered by Carlos. Many of the Movimiento volunteers working that night had been lurking in the same shadow of human despair. Most remarkable about the evening was not only the change in individual biographies represented by the volunteers, but by their return to the same streets to advocate for and offer a hand to the children left behind.