Tramas Project: a new path for community mental health in Santa Lucía

Tucumán, April 16, 2026.

With funding from Luxembourg and a formal partnership with the provincial Health Ministry, DYA Argentina launches a model that places young people themselves at the center of the design.

DYA Argentina and the Health Ministry of the province of Tucumán signed a collaboration agreement to launch the Tramas Project: Strengthening the Social Fabric, a community mental health initiative aimed at adolescents in Santa Lucía, in the Monteros department. The event was held at the 107 Emergency Classroom and included the participation of Helga Fourcade, executive director of DYA Argentina, together with the organization's territorial team, and representatives from the Health Ministry, the Education area, the Municipality of Monteros, COPRETI and the Directorate of Children and Family, SEDRONAR, and principals of the secondary schools of the Santa Lucía community.

The project, funded by Luxembourg's cooperation, stems from a diagnosis built with the community itself. A survey carried out by DYA in 2024 revealed that 80% of school-enrolled adolescents in Santa Lucía work for the market, and a community mapping workshop held in 2025 identified unplanned pregnancies, risk behaviors, low self-esteem, and the limited availability of adolescent-adapted health services as the main challenges. Santa Lucía is a town with a sugarcane history marked by crisis and seasonal work, with complex family dynamics and a deep-rooted institutional distrust that the project will need to address with sensitivity and patience.

This project proposes building the community device alongside adolescents, who will be protagonists of the design from the very beginning. The approach focuses on promotion, prevention, and early detection, and includes components of first listening, peer-to-peer work, teacher training, and coordination with the clinics of Hospital Santa Lucía for more complex cases. As a starting point, in the third week of May a diagnostic meeting will be held with the participation of all the actors and institutions that have been part of this gathering, and throughout the year work will focus on specific topics such as adolescent motherhood and fatherhood, life projects, and addiction prevention.

What makes the Tramas Project especially valuable is its vocation to become a replicable model. From the outset, the project includes a rigorous systematization of its processes to facilitate transfer to other provinces and countries in the region. Its first results will be presented at a mental health congress in August. DYA brings to this project five years of presence in Santa Lucía, during which it sustained the Youth Hubs (Puntos Jóvenes), spaces that today accompany more than 200 adolescents per year and that are part of the network on which it seeks to build.