Young people for a Healthy and Sustainable Word
Young people for a healthy and sustainable world: We create opportunities for more qualified young people and more engaged with their green future.
The Young Violence Diagnosis in Guatemala of 2009 defines the population at risk of engaging criminal behavior as “those young people that due to different factors that have affected their lives, have behaviors that are harmful for themselves and for their communities”. This same study concludes that the alternative to decrease violence is to implement prevention actions.
FUNDAECO is committed to support youth through prevention, the engagement and the generation of opportunities. Our plan is that the involvement of Guatemalan youth in the defense of the environment is an ideal mechanism to reduce their vulnerability and their risk to be involved in criminal activities, starting from the fundamental premise that: young people participation for the defense of the Environment and Nature, will allow them to increase their self-esteem, their mental health, their group integration, their social and civic participation, their ethic and citizen formation and their labor insertion.
On the one hand, their awareness about environmental problems, their organization and active participation in the defense of the environment will allow them to define a social participation space highly necessary and currently valued. On the other hand, their involvement in recreational and therapeutic activities in a natural environment and through a direct contact with nature (“Wilderness Therapy”) will strengthen their character, will inculcate them civic values and will encourage an ethical Life defense from his/her own person up to the biosphere altogether.
Field Intervention Models from the Program “Young people for a Healthy and Sustainable World”
- Promote self-esteem and ethics with respect to Life through a direct and intense contact with nature, environmental awareness and vocational technical training: Environmental Leader School; School Interpretation Tours; FUNDAECO Expeditions Club
- Establish a 3 Technical-Vocational Training Centers Network for young people (FUNDAECO-TEC) which will train new environmental leaders and recruit volunteers for the institution
- Support the establishment of Youth Environmental Association and the implementation of environmental action campaigns in a community level: Environmental Civil Service and Activism in defense of the environment
- Training and acquisition of volunteer opportunities, internships, temporary jobs and jobs in environmental entities and provision of financing and services for Business Development to Youth Eco-Business: Labor Intermediation and Support to Youth Eco-Business (Youth Eco-Touristic Guides, etc.)
