Criminals' house to become haven for children

Will become second Boys and Girls Club in Tijuana

TIJUANA -- The federal government donated a house, which had been seized from organized criminals, to build a Boys and Girls Club in a troubled eastside neighborhood.

The impoverished barrio, called Camino Verde, is made up of homes built haphazardly on steep canyons and is home to about 40,000 residents. They face problems with gangs and illegal drugs and the crime and violence they spawn.

The Baja California administrator for the federal housing agency, which coordinated the donation, said that Camino Verde was singled out for support because of the challenges it faces.

He said the neighborhood has high rates of poverty and crime, and that with a significant number of state prisoners serving their sentence in Tijuana came from Camino Verde.

The second Boys and Girls Club in the Tijuana is going up in the heart of that neighborhood, on Ricardo Acevedo Street. The club is modeled after the prevention program pioneered by the U.S.-based organization that operates such clubs north of the border.

The first Boys and Girls Club in Tijuana – indeed in all of Mexico -- opened three years ago in the Loma Dorada neighborhood, also on Tijuana's east side. The club serves 450 children a day, the majority of them with parents who work in the maquiladora sector.

In the club, the children spend all morning or afternoon working in the computer room, doing homework in the library or playing basketball, among other sports, before and after school.

On Wednesday, the president and founder of the Boys and Girls Club of Tijuana, Enrique Gamboa, received from a representative of the federal government the keys to the house, which was confiscated in 2007 from a criminal cell operating in Camino Verde.

The federal housing agency, known as Sedesol, will help the club remodel the home and in about one month it will open as the club, initially serving 150 children daily from the neighborhoods.

Since last March, the agency has implemented a program called "Quiero a mi Camino Verde," which built retaining walls, reinforced roofs, commissioned 33 murals and held cultural workshops.

Omar.millan@sandiegored.com

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