Education

Community Schools (Positive Youth Development), Holistic Education, Community Integration and Participation, Student Leadership, School Infrastructure Revitalization and Equipment

Widespread poverty and extreme violence hinder access to quality education. Conversely, poverty and violence are compounded by under-resourced public schools with inadequate infrastructure, overcrowding, and many safety concerns. To disrupt this harmful cycle, we invest in public schools throughout the region, with initiatives including: After-school programs, Mental Health Committees, Restorative Practices, Mindfulness, and Extreme Makeovers.

We provide kids from marginalized communities with opportunities that enable them to stay in school and away from violence. Our goal is to create safe, healthy, dynamic, and stimulating environments that respond to students’ interests (i.e. sports, arts, academics, leadership and service, science, and technology) and develop core life skills to help them succeed in school and beyond. These programs also integrate and empower communities, strengthening the social fabric by mobilizing students, teachers, parents, and volunteers, as partners in development.

Health

Mental Health, Girls Clubs, Emergency Medicine, and Community Public Health (Maternal & Child Health)

Latin America experiences not only extreme rates of violence, poverty, and trauma, but also dramatic gender disparities, high rates of teen pregnancy, and limited access to healthcare services that are often low quality. At Glasswing, we believe that we all have the potential to improve our communities’ public health outcomes. We invest in clinics, hospitals, and communities throughout the region to enhance the quality of healthcare, and provide children, youth, and adults with services that will improve their overall physical, mental, and emotional health.

We also implement Girls Clubs, which are aimed at shifting gender paradigms, building girls and young women’s confidence and other key social skills, providing comprehensive reproductive health education, and developing their financial and entrepreneurial capabilities. We also partner with local companies, government, and communities to improve the quality of maternal and child nutrition and other community health services in rural communities. We train healthcare professionals and first responders in basic and advanced life support, as well as trauma-informed care. We also implement SanaMente, a hospital-based violence prevention program, aimed at breaking the cycle of violence by educating survivors of violence about the physiological and emotional consequences of trauma, and providing them with the tools to manage them.

Youth Empowerment

Youth Impact Leaders, Jóvenes Constructores, Nucleo Lab Hub, and Generation Now

Due to the relatively low rate of economic growth in the region in the last decade, employment opportunities are scarce, and income generation is difficult, particularly for young people between the ages of 16 to 29. As a result, it is estimated that one in four young people neither studies nor works. This lack of economic opportunity, coupled with the extreme rates of violence, extortion, and the resulting lack of mobility, render thousands of young people without options, and pressured to migrate from their communities.

Workforce development programs build young people’s life skills and enhance their employability, better preparing them to integrate into the formal economy. Through our programs – Jóvenes Constructores, Mujeres con Futuro, Jóvenes Emprendedores Sociales – we work with youth to raise their self-confidence, reintegrate into the school system, participate in community service projects, and acquire the skills they need to access living wage jobs. Aside from the technical training, we also provide ongoing socio-emotional support to help them manage the multiple and complex challenges they face.

Community Empowerment

Community resilience requires local agency, empowerment, and ownership. Glasswing strives to co-create programs with communities, maintaining an ongoing feedback loop that ensures we respond directly to priorities that are set locally. We build on community strengths, and believe that people are a country’s most important asset.

By engaging and training community members as volunteers, we believe that we are not only generating economic value, but also critical social value – restoring trust and healing social fabric that has often been torn by violence, family disintegration, and social injustice. We believe deeply in the power of empathy and transformation through volunteerism, in which parents, students, teachers, government officials, corporate employees, University students, among others, dedicate their time and expertise to being role models for children and youth. We also implement Community Cafes and restorative practices, as well as bringing people together to provide community-based mental health to address the high levels of trauma and anxiety faced in the communities where we work. We believe in each individual’s potential to make a difference, maximizing the impact and sustainability of our programs.