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Working with Youth of Honduras at the Source

August 15, 2014
Christian Reformed World Missions

Christian Reformed World Missions

Teens in Honduras find personal value through youth clubs.

Berlen Otoniel Ramirez, a junior in high school, had been able to avoid the drug and gang culture that entices so many young people in Honduras.

Instead, he devoted his time to making his community better—until a gang member killed him only a few weeks ago.

Tragedies like Berlen’s can help explain why so many parents in Honduras would send their children from their gang-ridden, drug-overrun communities to the U.S.-Mexico border, says Caspar Geisterfer, a Christian Reformed World Missions missionary in Honduras.

With news of more than 57,000 minors entering the United States since last October from countries across Central America, it is helpful to look at what people such as Geisterfer are doing to stop this problem at the source.

“The gangs Berlen avoided reached out and took his life,” said Geisterfer, who had helped mentor Berlen a few years ago.

Geisterfer partners with the social justice organization Association for a More Just Society (AJS) to lead young people like Berlen in forming youth clubs. Geisterfer and AJS use the clubs to empower young people to make positive changes in their community.

In this way, Geisterfer is reaching one of the most at-risk populations in Honduras with the highest homicide rate.

“So many young people are tossed and blown about by the storm of teenage life,” said Geisterfer. “But as God’s people, we are supposed to be reaching out and showing them something different.”

For Berlen that “something different” was an after-school youth club. He and others who attended found that people like Geisterfer were willing to invest time in them and show constructive ways to be a positive impact in the community.

“My faith community invested a lot of time in me,” said Geisterfer. “Now I want to show young people in Honduras that we want to invest in them.”

The attention that young people are receiving from gangs is not limited to young men either, says Geisterfer. “Young ladies often have low self-esteem, but in gangs, they are appreciated as sexual objects.”

One of the clubs Geisterfer has worked with tries to reach out to these young women.The club has the goal of getting these young women out of their situation by putting mentors at every street who would help them.

The evening that gang members killed Berlen, he was walking with his father and sister. His father was shot and wounded, but his sister ran away and escaped successfully.

CRWM calls for prayer for the work that Geisterfer and others are doing as they seek with the help of God and through programs such as the after-school youth clubs to make a difference in the problem of young people heading to the U.S./Mexico border.