Editor's Note: Youth Corp Member Katie Jenness is our guest writer for this journal entry.

Today we are visiting the Centro de Atencion y Diferenciada del Adolescente (CAID), in Cajamarca. Also known as La Casa de Juventud, CAID teaches teens about health and family planning, warns them about the dangers of drugs, and provides psychological counseling. The organization is supported by CARE, Rotary International and the Health Minister of Peru.

Jeremy at La Casa de Juventud, in Cajamarca.

As we cram into the cozy, bubble-gum pink foyer of CAID, our Youth Corps group is greeted by a few Peruvian teenagers. Up until now, our counterparts have been strangers to us, but is about to change. To our right is a children's recreation room with red carpeting and yellow plastic toys. To our left, a tiny office hidden under a staircase. Above the office door hangs a sign, which reads "psychological guidance." Despite the modest size and placement of this office, we soon discover that psychological counseling is the most important aspect of CAIDīs work with teenagers.

Our guides lead us upstairs to a more spacious room with Ping-Pong and foosball tables. Decorating the walls are posters and sayings. One shows a lonely boy who has apparently been using drugs contrasted with a group of laughing children. Another has a picture of a little girl kissing a dog and a sign reading, "Elige Reir en Lugar de Llorar" (Laugh instead of crying).

We all are seated in this large room when the director of CAID and some youth health directors begin to tell us about their organization. CAID is a way for teenagers to find their identity and resist dangerous pressures. This process is assisted through psychological guidance, which, according to CAID, is the first level of health in any individual. Surrounded by only negative influences, teenagers cannot establish this first level of health. CAID, like similar organizations in the U.S., can provide an opportunity for positive development.

An interesting component of the CAID program is that it trains many of the teenagers involved in the program to later become health promoters among their peers. Once these teenagers replace the hazardous recreations in their lives with more positive ones - like theater, dance, and music - they serve as examples to the younger children in the community. The youngest member of the health promoters, Anthony, is only 12 years old.

For both CARE and CAID, progress is the ultimate goal. The people who participate in these organizations are responsible for their own betterment. In addition, CARE stresses that a very important part of development is self-sufficiency. By being self-sufficient, the people of a community or a country are not dependent on others and can continue to

Two young girls perform a traditional dance at the Cajamarca youth center.

solve their own problems even after CARE's work is finished. Similarly, the ultimate goal for each individual passing through the CAID program is stability: CAID helps with identity development in the present so that an individual can have personal stability in the future. And in light of CAIDīs philosophy, stability is simply freedom from dependence on the false support system of gangs, tobacco, alcohol, or drugs.

The theme of identity development, which is so central to CAID's philosophy, is one of the points that connects these two distinct groups of Peruvian and American teenagers. The fact is, both of us need a firm identity in place in order to have a healthy adult life.

We soon realize that we have even more in common. When the Peruvian teenagers ask us what problems we faced in the city of Chicago, someone replies, "gangs." Another Corps member responds, "They don't have gangs here (in Peru)." But sure enough, a group of CAID health promoters performs a small skit about the pressures of bandillas, or gangs. Our connection, which was so awkward at first, disappears when they ask us to join in a dance to traditional music.

"We are two groups of teenagers, from two different cultures, but we still both like to have fun, we still like to dance," remarks Polina, a member of the Youth Corps.

Polina and a friend dance to the sounds of Latin and American popular music.

The dancing overshadows the inspirational posters and slogans on the wall. The traditional music eventually gives way to even more appropriate music for this newly bonded group of teenagers: We begin to listen to rock music from the American group "Nirvana," as well as some bass-heavy Latin rap, which called for a break-dancing circle.

The dancing is mostly casual, except for an interlude of salsa, and it continues into the night. Thanks to their warm good-byes and an invitation to return, we leave our new friends with simply a feeling of comfort, a feeling that definitely wasn't strange to us.

"These teenagers and the entire CAID staff was simply another example of Peruvians always trying to go all out for you, making you feel comfortable, wanting to know about Chicago and wanting to know you," Polina says.

Continue to Day 6