UNOY Global Network Members

The poor communities in Mexico City live many and diverse problems that affect the development of the different sectors from the population. The children, adolescents and young people we work with, come from poor families. Most of them live in violence, sexual abuse, addictions, delinquency, abandonment of one of the parents, second marriages and some other situations that generate emotional and psychological alterations. The established social rolls cause a high lack of equity and opportunities for the members of the families.

In this sense, we consider important to take into account and in a serious reflection with the community the cultural norms that the society assigns to the male roll and the female roll, and the superficial prejudices, values and stereotypes. These schemes generate violence in the family. This violence is projected in a social way, in the streets, the jobs, the schools, and in the way people solve their conflicts.

Dinamismo Juvenil was legally constituted as a Mexican civil association on February 1999. It is an institution without aims of profit and no type of social discrimination by race, religion, culture or nationality. We have developed an attention model for children, adolescents and young people of popular districts and a Training School of young communitarian promoters in the subject of violence prevention in families, schools and communities.

Our Mission is to promote spaces for children and for youths and to be able to transform the conditions of life in their communities in joint and coordination with other actors with the young people as leaders of our communitarian projects. Having as subjects the violence prevention, the resolution of conflicts and the culture of peace, and impelling economic and social youth initiatives.

General objectives

To promote the leadership of young people in actions which construct community values.
To train Young people as peace educators.
To train the young people in Conflict resolutions.
To train young promoters in the social and family prevention.

We have 6 young people as staff and 20 volunteers, only 2 persons of the staff are adults. We reach to more than 300 people per year, 80% are young.

Biggest successes

One of our biggest successes was to promote 7 community centers in different neighborhoods to create spaces to encourage children, teen-agers and young people to participate, and develop skills in: Culture of Peace, No violence resolution conflicts and the solidarity as way of life. We had 3000 participants in these communities’ centers.

The abilities that we developed in these centers were:

the ability of thinking;
the ability of communication;
the ability of social interaction;
the ability as effective citizens;
the ability of giving ethic response as culture and social values.

With the following tools they could express their ideas to transform their reality from violence as way of life to a Culture of Peace:

Theater
Hand-craft
Music
Painting
Drawing
Community video
Community Photo-Art
Basketball and football

In these communities we made events in public spaces so people could see the job from the children and the young people.

Dinamismo Juvenil organized a soccer match to open spaces for young women. This activity was in coordination with the United Nations in Mexico and with the Youth Institute of Mexico City.

Dinamismo Juvenil has had different type of projects with children led by young people to create spaces where they can express themselves in different ways as video, radio, photoart, at the same time they can develop different skills in arts, sports and science, promoting a culture of peace.

Young promoters develop activities with teenagers to prevent violence int he communities.

Dinamismo Juveni work with children’s mothers to prevent violence in families.

This photo is with the Josefina María Valencia School, where Dinamismo Juvenil began its activities with children.

This public space was dangerous because of the gangs, Dinamismo Juvenil began sports activities with young people and children as violence prevention in the community and we had the support of the local government and the families’.