EUROPE/SPAIN - Spanish NGO starts youth cultural centres to serve 280,000 people including 110,000 children

Saturday, 14 May 2005

Rome (Fides Service) - INTERVIDA a Spanish NGO which works to improve the living standard of children supporting various programmes in Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Ecuador, India, Philippines and Mali, also supports two Cultural Centres El Alto in Bolivia to serve 57,000 young people in the region.
Over 280,000 people including 110.000 children can take part at these centres whose activities concentrate on the most disadvantaged people of the city of El Alto, adapting them to the age of the participants. Among the objectives, besides instructing the participants these centres will prevent youth from turning to drug abuse and from joining criminal gangs.
In the city of El Alto 95% of the population is under 30 and there are an estimated 200 gangs of young gangs most of which commit crimes. Scarcity of work and idleness push many youths to join these gangs from which they then find it difficult to escape. The markets of labour and study are inaccessible for young people in the more disadvantaged zones and this, together with family and social factors, causes a rise in juvenile delinquency.
El Alto, a new town originally a poor district of La Paz, capital of Bolivia, developed rapidly until 20 years ago when it declared itself autonomous and today has a population of about 800,000 inhabitants. (AP) (14/5/2005 Agenzia Fides; Righe:23; Parole:265)


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