Project Description
Democracy International is currently working with the American Institutes for Research (AIR) to provide analytical service support related to citizen security, youth crime, and violence prevention to USAID’s Latin America and Caribbean Bureau (LAC). Under this project, DI and AIR are expanding the evidence base around youth crime and violence prevention in the LAC region and communicating new research and findings to audiences within USAID and around the world.
DI has organized learning exchanges for practitioners, researchers, and U.S. government officials to discuss the evidence around different interventions to interrupt cycles of violence, combat gang influence, and prevent violence at the community level. These collaborative learning activities have included the 2017 Medellin Lab Workshop in Medellin, Colombia, the 2018 Violence Interruption Approach Conference in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and annual support to the Gang Prevention and Intervention Conference held in Los Angeles, California. DI also provided a citizen security-focused evaluability training to grantees of a USAID municipal strengthening program in Guatemala.
In addition to learning exchanges, DI conducted an assessment of rule of law in Paraguay in 2018 and is currently supporting an ongoing study of gang desistence in the Northern Triangle, which looks at incarcerated gang members in Guatemala and Honduras to understand why youth join and leave gangs, and an assessment of youth violence in Colombia.