In Colombia, paying at-risk youngsters to not kill [Video]

Growing up in a rough Colombian neighborhood governed by criminals and their mob law, Franklin Mina was destined to become a gangster.

Instead, the 27-year-old today studies social work at a technical college and runs a small business in gang violence-plagued Buenaventura, on Colombia’s Pacific coast.

Mina is a beneficiary of a new government plan to pay young people aged 14-28 in at-risk areas to stay out of trouble.

He receives the equivalent of about $250 per month, with which he bought a computer, a printer and supplies to open a stationery shop.

“Since I was a small boy I’ve known what a gun is, what a bullet is,” Mina told AFP of growing up in Buenaventura in the Valle de Cauca department.

The city of 324,000 people, like many others in Colombia, is at the mercy of a violent dispute between criminal gangs.

That kind of childhood, said Mina, …