PROJECT PROFILE -- OVERSEAS

Name of Canadian Association: YMCA-YWCA of Winnipeg

Overseas YMCA Partner: YMCA of Baja, California located in Tijuana, Mexico

Name of Non YMCA Donor: CIDA, Manitoba Council for International Cooperation

Length & Duration of Project: Three-year project beginning April 1, 2005 and ending March 31, 2008

Project Title and Description: Providing secure environments for children and youth at risk

Tijuana, Mexico, is a border town with a population of over 2 million. Approximately 47 percent of this population is below the age of 19.

Tijuana, and border towns in general, have become major operation bases for smugglers and areas of prostitution, drug addiction and alcoholism, in which many children and youth can easily be trapped or lured into.

As a response to this situation, Baja California YMCA is providing a safe place for children and youth at risk, through their three facilities located in very distinct areas of Tijuana.

The Casa YMCA for Migrant Youth will attend to youth, who have been detained or deported from the United States, and will educate youth on their rights, through a comic book, provided to the home by DIF (A Government Organization in Mexico). The main goal of the home is to reunite youth with their families, at the same time seeking the greatest possible protection of their human rights.

The Community Development Centre, located in a very impoverished community of Matamoros, a former squatter settlement, provides children with a secure place to learn and play, and provides much needed health check ups and nutritious snacks, allowing their mothers to feel comfortable in leaving their children to enter the work force.


Sports Facility Centre (Tijuana 2000) allows teens access to recreational activities and programs, at a very low cost, or at not cost at all. This program helps keep youth off of the streets of Tijuana.

Purpose:
The YMCA will work with children and youth at risk of beginning a life on the streets (more than 50 percent of the youth population, 12 years or older are economically active) or those for whom the street is already home and the YMCA is their only support.

In addition, it will provide childcare for underprivileged children, in order to equip them with the skills needed to continue their education and become productive contributors to their community and society. This also allows their mothers to enter the workforce and help support their families.

This project will address the CIDA priorities of basic human needs, human rights and infrastructure services, and the CIDA development priorities of health and nutrition, basic education with an emphasis on child protection.

Beneficiaries:
The project will directly target youth at risk (migrant youth, marginalized children), in Tijuana, both in and their local community and in the Mexican community at large. It will indirectly target the families, friends and all those who interact with these people today and in their futures.

Results Expected (per year):
- Approximately 2,500 youth will be attended to by the Casa YMCA
- 65 percent of these youth will be reunited with family
- 500 youth will be educated about their human rights, through materials provided by the Casa YMCA
- 115 underprivileged children will receive education, medical attention and nutrition
- 25 youth will participate in recreational activities that will help keep them off the street (with funding these numbers will rise, as more equipment will be bought and more subsidies will be offered)
- Between 25 – 50 women/mothers will be able to join the work force.