Indigenous youth promote citizen security.

The project “Indigenous youth promote citizen security” builds on the experience of Asociación Pop No’j’s training and talents school (ESFORTA, its Spanish acronym), a methodology that Pop No’j has developed in three municipalities in the department of Huehuetenango (San Pedro Necta, San Ildelfonso Ixtahuacán and Colotenango) since August 2014, as part of the project “Citizen security through culture”. ESFORTA, in turn, built on the results of Pop No’j’s first project supported by ICCO, “Violence prevention in Huehuetenango”, which started in July 2013.

The lessons learnt through these actions will now be transferred to other departments in Guatemala. As well as the three municipalities mentioned above, the project will work in six municipalities in Chimaltenango (with a Maya Kaqchikel population) and six indigenous communities in the municipality of San Luis, department of Petén (with a Maya Q’eqchi population).

The project’s geographical coverage reflects the areas in which Pop No’j is present, as defined in their strategic plan. These areas represent those with the highest levels of poverty, yet at the same time those in which more tangible results can be witnessed and the in which grassroots organizational processes are already underway. Pop No’j will project the successes of ESFORTA to these other regions of the country to promote youth organization and, in this way, promote violence prevention. The results of the 2014-15 project have gained recognition from the International Republican Institute (IRI), who gave “Peace Ambassador” awards to several youth participants. The IRI heard of Pop No’j’s work in Huehuetenango through third-party sources and has provided matching funds for certain activities. It is hoped that the relationship with the IRI continues.

Regarding political advocacy carried out by the youth beneficiaries, the achievements to date have been modest. Nonetheless, it’s worth mentioning that the Pop No’j projects that have been funded by ICCO have had some important achievements in this respect, especially regarding the construction of positive relationships with local authorities. One example of this has been the designation by the mayor’s office in San Ildelfonso Ixtahuacán of an office for youth beneficiaries of the current project to use as a space for the management of the virtual classroom platform.

In order to be able to place more emphasis on advocacy, an in-depth political training process is needed. Working towards this process has been a focus of the Association to date, which has carried out training on advocacy processes and methods. However, to have more impact in advocacy it would be necessary to have a multi-year project, given that gaining approval of municipal public policies on youth or gender is a process that takes time.