(26 June 2008) Drug-related organized crime, violence and homicides continue to wreak havoc on South America, states the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) report for 2007. The Colombian city Medellín surrendered to this violence in the 1990's. Today, it has left this violent past behind, but youths from marginal areas, many of them former street gang members at the service of drug traffickers, continue to suffer the consequences of those times.
The "Fénix Programme: Integral Development and Opportunities for Youth in Situations of Social Risk and Conflict", finalist in 2006 of the "Experiences in Social Innovation" contest organized by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, is a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) project of the Family Allowance Fund of Antioquia (COMFAMA) that addresses this situation.
The Fénix Programme assists youths from the lowest-income groups in Medellín to ensure them possibilities for development and social inclusion through participative learning processes that foment individual and group changes and improve community relationships.
The Fénix Programme defined the communities in which it wanted to work, and contacted priests, community leaders, community action representatives and teachers in those areas, to explain what it hoped to do. After reaching an agreement with community leaders about the work to be done, programme members contacted youths in their meeting places, gradually winning their trust and incorporating them in the project. Fénix offered to change their lifestyle with fun educational, recreational, cultural and occupational capacity-building programmes.
During this process, Fénix organizers began informally strengthening the ties between the families of these youths and community leaders. In 2004, they started working formally with the families through gatherings and support workshops to strengthen intrafamily ties. Then, they began training youth and community leaders to jointly undertake community service projects, entrepreneurship training and advisory and loan proposals for productive projects.
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