South America
50 Youth to Graduate from Second Phase of Leadership Initiative
Several participants from the Programa de liderazgo juvenil or Youth Leadership Initiative, reflect on their time in the program which concludes its second phase next month. Fifty youth in their teens to mid-twenties have received training in hygiene and sanitation, environmental degradation, media production and project management with the hopes they will become stewards of change in their communities. The majority of the participants are from indigenous and Afro-Colombian villages and rural areas in the northernmost department in Colombia, La Guajira.
The region has made headlines in recent years as 200,000 of Venezuelan migrants and refugees have crossed the border fleeing political strife and the collapse of the Venezuelan economy.
Yet La Guajira is no stranger to adversity. It is the second poorest department in Colombia and has struggled for generations with organized violence, neglected infrastructure, unemployment, poverty and infant mortality, and more recently, the impact of climate change.
The initiative, which is run in collaboration with our local partner Programas de Desarrollo y Paz del Cesar (PDPC), will celebrate the youth’s accomplishment with a graduation ceremony on Saturday, March 14th.
