(RNS) — When an impoverished neighborhood’s biggest obstacle is its murder rate, no amount of food donations and micro-loans will alleviate suffering.
Sociologist Kurt Ver Beek knows this firsthand. That’s why, when the struggling Honduran neighborhood of Nueva Suyapa was overrun by a murderous teen gang in the mid-aughts, the Honduras-based organization Ver Beek co-founded, La Asociación para una Sociedad más Justa (in English, the Association for a More Just Society), made radical moves outside the typical Christian nonprofit playbook. The top priority became anti-violence work: supporting victims, equipping police to prosecute crimes and addressing the systemic factors pressuring youths to join gangs in the first place.
The impact was staggering. Homicides in Nueva Suyapa dropped by roughly 75% between 2005 and 2009, a period coinciding with ASJ’s community interventions, according to the organization.
“When it comes to poverty, violence is still not a common issue addressed,” said Ver Beek, who believes that while aid and development work are important, they stop short of addressing root causes of injustice.
Despite the radical impact, ASJ, then a fledgling organization, had largely operated under the radar in Honduras until 2016, when ASJ was invited by Honduras’ president to serve on a commission to purge the National Police Force of corruption. As ASJ became recognized on the national stage, it caught the attention of journalist Ross Halperin, whose book about ASJ, “Bear Witness: The Pursuit of Justice in a Violent Land,” was published in …