Colombia has been suffering from violent conflicts in the past 50 years, which had led to poverty, job shortage, criminality and bad health conditions. For the past 14 years, Horyzon has been sucessfully working together with YMCA Colombia to improve the situation of disadvantaged young men and women. Using a wide variety of educational programs, Horyzon managed to help thousands of youth by keeping them away from the guerilla's forced recruitment and enabling them to take a step towards peace.
The civil war-like conditions in the rural regions of Colombia have forced many families to flee to the slums of the big cities where poverty, job shortage and criminality are commonplace. Parents must accept any work they can get and the children and youth are unattended. In such a perspective-less environment, the danger of drugs and violence lurks around every corner and ought to be averted by someone. In this case, someone is Horyzon in collaboration with YMCA Colombia.
Horyzon can't solve the problem of Colombia's youth in the short term because it concerns not just the disadvantaged youth but also politics and the whole society. For now, Horyzon can reach out to about 1500 youth in Colombia and give them a safe place to go, a caring community, a youth leadership education and training in legal income creation and peaceful conflict resolution. It is our pleasure to see the impact of our project on the attitude and values of the young Colombians.
The education activities open up new knowledge and values for the youth which can change their attitude towards societal issues and be passed on to their families and friends. We truly believe that this project has a notable impact on the way young people think, act and therefore influence their environment and the whole society. 14 years of experience, more than 10'000 directly affected youth and professional controlling instruments show the long-term impact of this project.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
