DYA participated in the III International Seminar on the Prevention of the Recruitment of Children and Adolescents, held in Bogotá, Colombia, sharing lessons learned from its experience promoting safe and protective schools in Esmeraldas.

Preventing the recruitment of children and adolescents begins long before a recruitment situation occurs. It begins when communities, institutions, and schools are able to create conditions in which children and adolescents feel protected, heard, and supported in building their own life plans.

Based on this premise, Desarrollo y Autogestión (DYA) participated in the III International Seminar on the Prevention of the Recruitment of Children and Adolescents: “From the Territory to Action,” held at the Universidad Externado de Colombia in Bogotá on August 27 and 28, 2026. The seminar provided a regional space for dialogue among civil society organizations, communities, academia, international cooperation agencies, and institutions committed to protecting children and adolescents.

Representing DYA Ecuador, Luis Stacey participated in the panel “Safe and Protective Schools: Education as a Pathway for Preventing the Recruitment, Use and Exploitation of Children and Adolescents,” sharing lessons learned alongside adolescents in Esmeraldas through DYA’s experience implementing the Integrated Network of Safe and Protective Schools (RIESP) project.

The participation provided an opportunity to share an experience developed in a territory where violence and insecurity pose concrete challenges to the educational trajectories and well-being of children and adolescents. In these contexts, strengthening schools as spaces of protection takes on a relevance that goes far beyond academic learning.

The voices of adolescents remind us that school can be both a refuge and a place of belonging. When teachers and other trusted adults listen, believe in, and support them, they build trust. And when adolescents learn, develop skills, feel recognized, and find opportunities to participate, they are also strengthening the tools they need to face situations of risk.

A protective school is not simply one where violence does not occur. It is a school where adolescents learn, belong, participate, and feel recognized.

The experience shared at this seminar reaffirms the importance of promoting comprehensive and coordinated responses involving schools, families, communities, public institutions, and civil society organizations. In contexts affected by violence, protecting educational trajectories is also a prevention strategy.

Because preventing recruitment also means ensuring that children and adolescents do not lose their desire to keep learning or their belief that school belongs to them, too.