Casa Alianza is the
Latin American equivalent of
Covenant House. They provide
shelter and
basic needs (especially safety) for
homeless children. Homeless kids in Latin America have all the problems homeless kids in
New York or
LA would have, like
drug abuse,
prostitution, violence, disease, etc, plus the added bonus that the police like to kill them for fun. Every morning in
Guatemala City someone finds a pile of homeless kids somewhere with neat little bullet holes in the backs of their heads. The cops call it "social cleansing."
Casa Alianza, CalDH, and other human rights organizations in Guatemala do what they can, but the police still have so much power that they can't really be prosecuted for anything. Also, sad to say, a lot of Guatemalans aren't too upset about it. They make the point that the kids would have died of drugs or AIDS or something anyway, and this was probably less painful.
Casa Alianza is these kids' best hope most of the time. It offers a place where they can sleep safely, avoid their pimps, and sometimes get drug rehab and maybe even job training. Visit their webpage in English at http://www.casa-alianza.org/EN/index-en.shtml