- Title: USAID suspension shutters Colombia programs, endangering youth
- Date: 18th March 2025
- Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) MEMBER OF USAID-FUNDED ANTI-GANG PROGRAM JOVENES RESILIENTES, LUZ MELY MORENO, SAYING: "But then the program was created and it helped me a lot, because today I am a university student, I am in the seventh semester of university in the psychology program. I am a community leader, I am a psychology and social counselor of the Black Boys Choco. I have b
- Embargoed:
- Keywords: Colombia Donald Trump US USAID grants
- Location: QUIBDO, CHOCO & UNIDENTIFIED JUNGLE AREA, COLOMBIA / WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES / COPENHAGEN, DENMARK
- City: QUIBDO, CHOCO & UNIDENTIFIED JUNGLE AREA, COLOMBIA / WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES / COPENHAGEN, DENMARK
- Country: Colombia
- Topics: South America / Central America,Government/Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA004898014032025RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: The global suspension of USAID funding is shuttering programs in Colombia's most impoverished places, endangering implementation of the country's 2016 peace deal and leaving aid recipients "hopeless", said people working at the agency, local officials, program directors and beneficiaries.
The Trump administration's freeze of nearly all funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has thrown humanitarian initiatives around the world into turmoil.
Colombia in recent years received as much as $440 million annually in USAID assistance for more than 80 programs, making it the largest recipient of the agency's funds in the western hemisphere, according to U.S. government data.
Choco, which boasts both Caribbean and Pacific coastline and borders Panama, has long been a strategic hub for drug trafficking and a stop for northbound migrants. It is the country's poorest province, according to the national statistics agency, and is populated mostly by Afro-Colombian andIndigenous communities.
Luz Mely Moreno, 25, grew up in a gang-controlled neighborhood in provincial capital Quibdo and says she was on the point of joining a criminal group before taking part in a mentorship program at USAID-funded anti-gang program Jovenes Resilientes, or Resilient Youth, which has had its funding cut.
"Before, I was a person who had no set goals," she told Reuters.
Resilient Youth's mentorship gave her a chance to see a different life, she said. Moreno is now studying studying psychology at a local university.
She is afraid that without the program, other young people will be lured by gangs.
Neither USAID nor the State Department responded to a request for comment on the cuts and whether the peace deal would be affected.
Funding of $60 million for "Indigenous Peoples and Afro-Colombian empowerment in Central America" was cited by U.S. President Donald Trump in his recent address to Congress as an example of "appalling waste". Colombia is in South, not Central, America.
The program mentioned by Trump is one of USAID's most successful in Colombia, according to former foreign minister Murillo, who himself is Afro-Colombian and from Choco.
"Young people have been left at the mercy of illegal groups and in a state of defenselessness," said Wilmer Serna, coordinator for Youth Resilience, which also provided entrepreneurship opportunities, sports and music lessons before it shut down. He said USAID was its only source of funding.
Youth Resilience, which had 30 offices nationwide, reached about 60,000 young people with its programs, according to a post on LinkedIn by its former director, who did not respond to Reuters questions.
The Quibdo office rehabilitated some 200 gang members, Serna said, and documents from the organization show it provided opportunities and mentorship to more than 3,100 youths.
A December ceasefire between three gangs has cut Quibdo's homicide rate by more than half, officials say, but youth programs are as important as the ongoing negotiations to continue the truce past a March 31 expiration.
The aid freeze undermines peace efforts in rural Choco, said one source who worked on a USAID program implementing the 2016 deal there, and production of cocaine and migrant flows could rise.
Beneficiary Moreno hopes the Trump administration will change its mind.
(Production: Paula Andrea Orozco, Javier Andres Rojas, Camilo Cohecha, Herbert Villarraga, Nina Lopez) - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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