IX. Program for the Children and Youth

This program, which is the first in the communities, promotes participation and involvement of the children and youth in the knowledge of their mission and impact in the personal, familial, ecclesiastic and communal development.

This program has been implemented starting from the year 2000 from the hope of the construction of the kingdom of God and based on the justice, the peace, and the solidarity as hope of the people in the effort to conserve the life in the face of structures that promote the slow and painful death through poverty, marginal living conditions, and exclusion.

The leadership actually consists, in large part, of adults who are completing a protagonist paper on the changes and processes of communal development. They do this by contributing the best of each man and woman from the local committees that CESSMAQ has been forming and qualifying. They have opened new ways, planted seeds for development, visualized, and understood that the marginal living conditions, oppression, and poverty are not the design of God and that, to the contrary, God in His word challenges to fight against it.

These leaders who are involved in the committees have visualized a better future for their children and their villages. Now this plan pursues making it a reality for the children and youth.

1. General Objective for Youth

• Facilitate the participation of young men and women in a new generation of leaders in Christian principles and values, participatory and democratic, who will be able to pursue and retain the process of a common self-development that will result in better conditions of life.
• Form a movement of Christian youth with participation on the part of men and women who are committed to contribute to the construction of processes which are social, economic, cultural, political, and ecclesiastical, just and equal, which make the kingdom of God viable.

2. Specific Objectives for Youth

• Organize the men and women youth in a process of training, which is technical, social and biblically theological for their insertion in an organized and conscientious way in a productive, social, political, and ecclesiastical process of their region and community.
• Initiate activities that permit the union of the 25 groups of youth who are involved in the Plan to form a movement of Christian youth with a Mayan identity that will create a place to facilitate contributions to the construction of a society that is multilingual, multicultural, and multiethnic, fair and demonstrates solidarity.
• Promote and facilitate human and financial resources and materials that elevate the academic, economic and social level of the men and women youth.

3. Youth Goals

• Each year train 625 youth from 25 communities who are involved in the Plan in the following areas: socio-political, economics, biblical-theological, organization, basic administration, models of development, agreements of peace, human rights, generating and developing leadership, conflict resolution, and others of interest. In 5 years, there will be 3,125 qualified young men and women.
• To train 625 youth during the year 2001 in the areas of diagnostics, planning, monitoring and evaluation. At the end of the year, there will be, as a result, each group of youth from 25 communities with a plan for their work.
• To organize 25 groups of youth, one per community, and choose their directives through a democratic process, generating equality and inclusion.
• In a year, realize three workshop/seminars in the areas of interest for the youth, ones with an emphasis on biblical-theology and with the participation of 125 young women and men from 25 directing committees from 25 communities. In 5 years, there will have been 15 activities that will benefit 125 young men and women.
• Each year, there will be two activities carried out in each community that may be a forum, workshop, seminar or conference depending on the decision of the groups of youth. They will cover a theme that will be of general interest to the community. The committee of youth will plan and coordinate the activity, with the help of CESSMAQ. These activities will be a means by which to manifest the presence and contributions of the youth in their communities. In 5 years, there will have been 250 communal formative activities in 25 communities, which the present plan impacts.
• Establish five centers or schools of occupational training with alternatives for the insertion into the labor market for the youth who, for situations of poverty, cannot continue studying and have no occupation.
  
  The centers will be distributed in the following manner:
  1. One center will function in Chajabal
     Women: handiwork embroidered by hand and by machine
     Men: Tailoring
  2. One center in the village of Tzampoj
     Women: Handiwork, typical fabrics sewn and embroidered
     Men: Shoe store, carpentry, masonry, tailoring
  3. One center in Tzucubal
     Women: Handiwork, typical fabrics sewn and embroidered
     Men: Shoe store, carpentry, masonry and tailoring
  4. One center in Ladrillera
     Women: Handiwork, typical fabrics sewn and embroidered
     Men: Shoe store, carpentry, masonry and tailoring
  5. One center in Guineales
     Women: Handiwork, typical fabrics sewn and embroidered
     Men: Shoe store, carpentry, masonry and tailoring
  Annually, there will be 200 youth present in 5 centers, 100 women and 100 men. In 5 years, 1,000 young men and women will have been prepared who will be trained to carry out work.
  
  
• Promote financial resources for groups of youth in extreme poverty as work capital in order to be able to develop the occupation or work learned in the centers of occupational formation. Apportion the amount of Q187,500 in the form of loans to 375 youth in 25 communities (Q500 for each young person) during 2 years as work capital for the development of the occupation or work learned.
  
  In 5 years, 750 young men and women will benefit in two groups of 375 each. Each group will utilize the loan during 2 years, during which time each young man and woman beneficiary will generate his or her own capital. The last year will be set aside to recover loans that are lagging behind and to evaluate and prepare new groups or new communities that need the loans.
  
  
• Develop recreational, cultural and sports activities in each of the 25 communities. In the sports activities, there will also be a designated time for reflection for the development of attitudes of tolerance, respect, and recognition of human relations and human rights, rejecting bad habits, drugs, and violence.
• Apportion scholarships for study to young men and women in extreme poverty and this way contribute to the academic formation to take advantage of personal, familial, and community development.

4. General Objective for Children

Create places of integral formation for the children and contribute to the carrying out of the commandment: Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6

5. Specific Objectives for Children

• Initiate activities that favor the integral development of the children in the physical, spiritual, intellectual, psychological, and social areas at an early age, cultivating Christian principles and values and morals which allow for a culture of peace and love for fellow men.
• Give special attention to the spiritual growth of the children and their active and conscientious participation in the life of the church.

6. Goals for Children

• Meet, organize and train 750 children in 25 communities each year. The themes shall be biblical-theological, moral and Christian service. Appropriate methods will be utilized for children of 5 to 12 years of age. In 5 years, 3,750 boys and girls will attend from 25 communities.
• Develop Christian recreational and sports activities in which can be included attitudes of tolerance, respect, and recognition of human relations and human rights, and rejection of bad habits and violence.

7. Budget for Youth

8. Budget for Children

9. Educational Projects That Already Obtained Financing