The stronger youth

The adolescents with criminal conducts belong to a vulnerable population, with few formation and job opportunities, which creates a big risk on psychosocial complications, such as abuse of psychoactive substances and delinquency. 

Facing this problem, it is proposed a process of training which aims consolidate an entrepreneurship unity focused on creating technology applications that will give an answer to some needs of the current society.

Through this process it is expected to create an identity of young boys and girls different than the abuse of drugs and the delinquency, and impact in a positive way on the violence interpersonal index and delinquency index; besides that it will be made a model with the possibility of replicate this project or solution in other communities around the globe.

It is calculated that globally, there are committed two hundred thousand murders per year between young people. The majority of the death of adolescents is due to interpersonal violence. In 2015, almost two out of three victims died from murder, and 82000 teenagers died from violence around the globe. 

Every seven seconds teenagers are killed in the world, and the majority of the murders has two common factors: Use of psychoactive substances and a psychosocial vulnerability.

These young boys and girls have the desire to belong to a social group, that unfortunately is based on a criminal scenario. 

Also, the lack of opportunities related with education and employment is a problem that is faced by these young people. 

Therefore, the solution “The stronger youth” is looking forward to help them on the search of their own identity and giving them formation to find job opportunities. 

Our main goal is to strengthen the identity of the young boys and girls, trough and entrepreneurship unity, which it is focused on the technology that will help satisfy the needs of the society.

On the first phase of the project, it will be conformed a group of training on technology and programming skills to adolescents who abuse of psychoactive substances and with criminal conducts.
After that, it will be produced technology applications that will be offered on companies and others city sectors where it is needed, and will be useful on the objectives of the sustainable development, for example: Transportation, quality education, non pollution and accessible energy, peace and justice, climate action, health.

And the next phase consists on lead this project to other parts of the country, continent and eventually of the world, where this situation of the youth is similar.

The process includes differents steps from the identification and characterization of the young people involved, to the formulation, implementation and evaluation of plans intra and intersectorials of rehab based on the community.

The target population are the adolescents who have had a history of criminal behavior and psychosocial risk determined by socioeconomic level like 0, 1, 2 and abuse of psychoactive substances in the city Manizales, where takes place the pilot test. 

With the mentioned above it is intended to impact on three common phenomena of this specific population, which are:

• Search of an identity reasserted by their group of pairs.
• The abuse of psychoactive substances.
• The lack of formation and job opportunities. 

These problems will be solved through the strengthening of a group of mutual help between pairs, focusing on the training and creation of technology resources that will generate productivity on the young boys and girls, and eventually in the future will improve their economic income. 

Their needs will be addressed by proposing this identity idea that strengthen their desire of autonomy and at the same time contribute to improve their socioeconomic conditions. Using technologies tools it is estimated that this process be interesting and attractive for them and they would get into the program and would stay in it.

The psychosocial difficulties fed by the few opportunities of formation and employment make this project a great tool to solve this problem. 

The young people are more involved and attracted to the technology and due their psychological development they are searching to belong to a social group. Therefore, the proposal of the project will strengthen their capacities, and will help create a different life project and will improve their social conditions on the communities in which these young boys and girls and their families live.  

Regionally, there is no a similar strategy, that has worked on the strengthen of technology abilities on a population with the characteristics described before. On the other hand, the project is based on giving an answer to the job needs of a country, which are based on the development of technology applications, using tools of easy access for the community, having on mind that the young people are, every time, more interested on everything related with the technology. 

The combination of the engineering and mental health seen on the project is a key to understand the innovation part of itself, which is structured like this:

• Training on the development of mobile and computer applications through class where the technology is essential, and addressed to young boys and girls with criminal behavior.
• Mental health of these adolescents, which is addressed by the accompaniment of several mental health workers from the beginning o the process to every possible step taken by the young people involved on the program. 

Also, having control on the risks of the mental health of the young people, makes the project an inclusive one, making it even more innovative, because it will no only affect the teenagers participating on the project, but also their families and their entire community or city where the solution is taking place. 

The project will use technology that is already existing, that is conformed by resources such as computers, analysis of data of relevant information of the young people, and the most important is the development of software applications. Nowadays programming is a skill very useful on the current age, it can be learned at any age and it has a lot of fields, but for some people, this skill is seen as something impossible to learn, it is not something that they can reach. That is the reason why is so important to show of all the benefits of learning to code, especially on these teenagers, that are looking indirectly for other opportunities to change their lives and to get involved in something valuable. 

In can be possible, that for the majority of the people participating on the process, there is null knowledge of basic technology, such as the handling of a computer, so having as a goal the development of apps will be a huge impact on their everyday life.

As said before, programming affect many fields of the nowadays common life, so it is intended to create applications that satisfy some needs of the society, that the own young boys and girls would find through the making of the process. Starting from scratch, to develop games and software is the core technology that will be used on "The stronger youth".

The use of the programming skills to develop software has been used for the past years as and almost entirely essential tool to many fields of the society. Currently every organization, company, institution, among others use applications to make their everyday work easier and more productive. Examples of the development of software are found in almost every aspect of life. These are some of those examples:

• Development of applications used in Investigation and science, to recollect data, make analysis and show results.
• Software development related with transportation in the cities.
• Mobile and computer applications used to reduce the pollution of the Earth.
• Applications related with the improvement of the quality of many people around the globe.

These are only a few evidences of how the programming is used nowadays, and how it works in an efficient way reaching a point where programming is a great skill to have and to implement in the lives of vulnerable population, as the young people mentioned before. 

A process will be started with adolescents with psychosocial vulnerability and history of criminal conduct, it will be established with them a group of mutual help, a group per commune, starting, will be five groups, which one of them will be composed by a maximum of twenty teenagers. With these groups it will be carried out a process of entrepreneurship, that will begin with the progressive development of skills focused on the handling and creation of technologies. This strategy will be taken place in the community which every young boy and girl belongs to. (TechnologyCommunity Centers)

The mentioned above will generate technology applications products that will satisfy needs of companies of the region, aiming to become a product that besides give an answer to needs, also give economic resources to all of the linked families to the program. 

As an index of these products, it will be an accompaniment to reduce the abuse of drugs (reduction of the abuse determined by the Crafft scale for Colombia), also it will be an index the process the adolescents of technology formation, training on entrepreneurship and number of applications made. 

The estimated results of this intervention will be principally the reduce of the abuse of psychoactive substances; an improvement on the interpersonal relationships of the teenagers with their families, determined by the APGAR familiar; a better perception of the quality of life determined by the questionnaire WHOQOL - BREF (World Health Organization Quality of Life); a reduction of criminal behaviors and interpersonal violence.

It will be estimated as impacts a reduction on the interpersonal violence and on the delinquency on the city of Manizales, especially on this age group, an increase on the education and job opportunities of the youth of the city and a economic strengthening of some families with low income and give some answers to technologies needs of the city.  A risk could be the difficulties on the attachment of the teenagers on this process, however this could be surpassed with the participation of them on every stage of the program, following the precept "Nothing about us without us".

Currently, there are 1200 people that are served by the project, in which are included 400 adolescents and their respective families, that will initially on the city of Manizales, Colombia.

It is estimated that in a year the project will impact 36000 people, expanding the solution program to close regions. 

And it is calculated that the project will scale to a Latin American level, having the purpose of impact 3000000 in the next five years. 

These numbers could be achieved with the support of government institutions, or foundations that help on the improvement of the quality of life of young boys and girls, wanting to make a big life change and in that way contributing on the creation of a better society. 

The goals between next year and the next five years are:

1. Improvement on the quality of life of teenagers with a history of criminal conduct.

2. Reduction of the abuse of psychoactive substances.

3. Reduction on the index of interpersonal violence in the city o cities where the project will take place.

4. Training on technological entrepreneurship skills of young boys and girls.

5. Improvement on the family relationships of the people involved.

6. Generate motivation on the adolescents of the programs to continue learning.

7. Development of software applications made by the adolescents with the guidance of mentors.

8. Creation of technological products such apps that help satisfy needs of companies and the society around the young people and their communities. 

The barriers that could be found on the development of the process of the process are:

• Difficulties created by the lack of government support
• Reduced attention by the health sector on complications related with the abuse of psychoactive substances.
• Difficulties on the process related with the territoriality of gangs conformed by adolescents. This could be a problem because at the beginning it could be hard to attach the adolescents to the program. 

Difficulties generated by the government support: It is wanted to impact in a positive way the initial intervention through epidemiologic data to show the government this information, and also expose them the need of the implementation of the strategies of the program on the society.

• Reduced attention by the health sector on complications related with the abuse of psychoactive substances: Through the strengthening of psychological advisories that offer the project itself it is expected to improve the psychosocial risk of the youth and their families, the professionals on psychology will also promote the need of the connection between the intervention and the health sector, to manage the severe risks related with mental health, which this intervention is also looking to improve.
• Difficulties on the process related with the territoriality of gangs conformed by adolescents: It is wanted from the beginning to make participate the young boys and girls on the process, making them know that it is something built with them, for them and it reflects their rush of finding an identity. 

The people working on the solution are:

• Two psychologists.
• Two social workers.
• One engineering and also a teacher.
• One adviser psychiatrist.
• One secretary.
• Of them three are contractors. 

All of the people mentioned above are professional well educated and with great skills in their respective expertise area, which makes the project something realizable and effective. Every one of them has something in common with each other, and it is the desire of contribute on the improvement of the quality of life of young boys and girls, through mental health and education, and also every one of them has the will to work with communities, and most of them have experience working with vulnerable population. 

Currently the project has partners mentioned below:

• "Universidad de Manizales": University of the city that has helped to show the project do different sectors of the city.
• "Alcaldía de Manizales": This one is the Town Hall, which has been a great support of the development of the project, through the lending of technology resources. 

The business model is external, because it has the support of organizations, but it works by its own with the people of the team. 

Finding partners to support the project, with the help of the government and other organizations interested of the development of the program. 

Besides of provide the resources Solve is a platform to find ideas and support, also gives recognition to the project, which offers the opportunity to make the project known in a lot of places in the world. The process of learning is beyond the application to Solve, it belongs to the MIT, which makes it a great program to apply, because it is intended to solve a problem of the society, and give an answer to the inequality present in the current world. The projects of the past are very related with human situations that are determined by the health. 

With the support on Solution Technology and Product and Service Distribution it will be a help on the development of the software applications and commercialization of those, the project would be more complete and would have more resources to work on it, which can contribute to extend the project to more young boys and girls locally and globally. 

• Solve Members
• MIT Faculty
• UNICEF

Partnering with these organizations could improve in a very positive way the path of the project, making the program more known in a global way. 

Experience working on community mental health and mutual help on multiple populations that are deserving these interventions. It will be used on those mutual help groups on the entrepreneurship unities to search for a sustainability of these projects and also in the search of new partners that make the strategy to persist and expand.