Municipal Partnerships for Violence Prevention in Central America

The program aimed to foster the development of regional peer knowledge networks and provide training and technical assistance to local governments and community groups. ICMA worked with key institutions in the region to promote the creation of municipal-led mechanisms to provide leadership in bringing together key stakeholders to design and implement crime and violence prevention programs. To achieve this objective, ICMA developed a Toolkit for municipalities to use in promoting the creation of municipal-led mechanisms. The Toolkit was designed to help municipalities bring together key stakeholders to design and implement crime and violence prevention programs. ICMA also facilitated the participation of experts in national, regional, and international conferences and conducted workshops for municipal associations and municipal stakeholders. Additionally, ICMA developed a website (www.amuprev.org) to showcase daily examples of municipalities throughout Latin America that are taking the initiative to develop programs that are building the foundation for crime prevention in their communities. ICMA also engaged in a series of municipal partnerships with cities in the US to share the model of community-oriented policing and governance with municipalities in El Salvador and Panama. Through these partnerships, police officers, municipal staff, community, and private sector representatives from Santa Ana, California; Arlington, Texas, and Pinellas County, Florida, provided information, training, and technical assistance to their counterparts to bring about a greater awareness of the need to prioritize and act upon violence and crime prevention programs in a coordinated and comprehensive fashion. In 2012, USAID issued a six-month extension to ICMA through March 29, 2013, followed by a no-cost extension through April 30, 2013, and another cost extension through September 30, 2013. During the last year of the Program, ICMA continued to support both objectives, applying the tools and methodologies tested throughout the first Phase of this Cooperative Agreement to new municipalities in Guatemala and El Salvador. ICMA also provided continuing support to the Municipal Crime and Violence Prevention Committees of Palencia and Santa Catarina Pinula, Guatemala, and continued to share information and practices with its established network of violence prevention and other interested practitioners in the Region. In 2015, USAID issued another two-year cost extension to expand the CityLinks Partnerships into four additional target municipalities, build on the existing AMUPREV network of security practitioners, and strengthen the relationship between the State of Río de Janeiro and/or the Federal Government of Brazil and El Salvador and/or other third countries. This report summarizes activities and major accomplishments carried out during the period of Jan – March 2016. During this quarter, ICMA conducted a series of trips to Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and Guatemala to provide technical assistance to municipalities, coordinate with local NGOs and national entities, and interview candidates for local advisor positions. ICMA also provided training to selected candidates for local advisor positions and coordinated with municipal coordinators to develop the assistance offered by AMUPREV in coordination with AMHON representatives. The AMUPREV website continues to be updated daily with news and articles related to municipal-based violence prevention. Quarterly bulletins are prepared, posted on the website and on Facebook, and sent by email to more than 2800 stakeholders in the Region. ICMA also sends out a summary of the week’s news in “Noti AMUPREV” to its email list and replicates the newsfeed on Twitter. To date, AMUPREV has 702 followers and 2,322 Tweets.