UNICEF ANNUAL REPORT for

The municipality of San Marcos is one of the most violent in the country, creating an adverse environment for children and adolescents to avail themselves of educational opportunities. Through UNICEF's financial and technical support, the local government has established a Monitoring and Evaluation Unit, which generates relevant information for the monitoring and enforcement of the rights of children. As a result of the experience, local government has begun to exercise greater leadership among the various institutions and organisations in the city, appealing to shared responsibility, partnership and coordination to ensure the inclusion and retention of children in school and their success to eventually enter the labour market. This makes it an important experience for the local systems of protection of rights of children and adolescents, since the field of education responds to the goals of preventing violence, migration and poverty. Innovation or Lessons Learned The innovative aspects of this experience are: • Effective strategies to generate ownership by local authorities of the needs and problems facing children and adolescents can be incorporated into local policies with a view towards national level expansion. • Institution-building and strengthening can reinforce the rule of law at the municipal level and help to reinforce the preventive component of violence reduction. • The creation of effective coordination mechanisms and responsibility around the right to education, between the various institutions and organisations in the municipality, is a fundamental element in interventions of this kind. • Positioning of life education, the participation of adolescents and its relationship to the world of work from the educational field represents a fundamental criterion for educational quality. Potential Application The strategy is sustainable and can be replicated in other municipalities; in fact it is already expanding in Sonsonate and San Salvador, which are also very violent areas. The main challenge to consider is building capacity among local authorities and solid links between all the players that can and must contribute to fulfilling the rights of children. The strategy has heavy involvement from the central government through MINED, an institution that is driving the model "Full Time School; the model will be piloted in 22 schools in the country.