Two months have passed since the Kenco CoffeeVsGangs project began in Honduras. Twenty young people have signed up for a training course that sets out to give them a great new oppurtunity in life. Far from the communities and gang presence that characterise their home lives they are being offered tuition in modern farm management techniques, accounting, agricultural science as well as business and English language tuition.
The Irish Times is documenting their progress and will be visiting the farm in Honduras in the new year. You can read more on the project here on irishtimes.com/coffeevsgangs as well as on Kenco's main site coffeevsgangs.com. In this slideshow we get to know the participants a little better.
Their age range is from 16 years to the late 20s. Both men and women are involved and they are from a variety of complicated and challenging backgrounds.
They all have one thing in common - a desire to better their lives through training and employment. Stay with us as we chart their progress over the next few months.