Luís Alberto Castillo’s eyes light up when he talks about compost. The 19-year-old enthusiastically describes the right mix of manure, straw and moisture, the right time to turn it—and the payoff four months later, when he sifts the compost through a heavy screen and bags it.

For Castillo, who talks about setting up a small business someday, merely thinking about the future is a major step. Like thousands of adolescents in the sprawling Peruvian capital, he has spent time living on Lima’s rough streets.

Now, however, he’s a Chiko Ecológico, one of 72 teenagers and young adults who are learning gardening skills through a city-sponsored program. Planting trees, sprucing up city gardens, making compost and tending the 50,000 or so seedlings in a city-contracted nursery get him and other program participants off the street, and put about US$85 in their pockets every month.

In a small way, the US$92,000-a-year program helps develop environmental consciousness and bolster green space in this coastal-desert city of 8 million people, which has lost more than 30% of its green areas in the past decade due mainly to demographic pressure.

More broadly, it helps participants experience what one organizer calls “the birth of something.” César Montoya, an agronomist involved in the program since it began in 1998, says that when participants are put in charge of a seedling, “they care for it and watch it grow. It helps them develop an appreciation for life.”

For Castillo, it’s clearly a welcome change. “The street is not good for you,” he says. “You’re cold, you go hungry, and if you don’t have anything to eat, you steal. You do harm to yourself and others.” Besides, he adds, people look on street kids—callously called “pirañas” in Lima—with suspicion. “They’re afraid of you,” he says.

Montoya knows the feeling. “I used to think these kids were dangerous,” he says. “Now, I realize it’s worth giving them a chance.”

Montoya oversees the work teams, which consist of the Chikos Ecológicos and an equal number of adult employees who provide guidance and enforce discipline.

While most of the Chikos are referred by nongovernmental organizations working with street kids, a small group is from Manthoc, a social-services organization that assists—and is largely run by—working children. Because Manthoc members tend to be more motivated and disciplined than former street kids, Montoya mixes them into the work teams to serve as peer role models.

Patterns not easily broken

The principle of the Chikos Ecológicos seems straightforward, but the reality is far more complicated. Most participants are from fractured families, battling drug and alcohol dependency and steeped in life on the streets.

While many of the Chikos have been in the program for several years, many more attend for a week or two and vanish. Some 700 have come and gone in the six years since the program began, says María Fung, director of Lima’s Job Promotion and Microenterprise Office—the agency that oversees the program.

But there are success stories, too. The first gardeners were five young men who had recently been released from prison. The three Montoya has managed to keep in touch with have rebuilt their lives and now have families. “They had a very strong will to change,” he says.

By 7:30 a.m., the Chikos Ecológicos are gathering at the nursery operated by Emape, a private business that is part of the municipality’s service system. They load bags of compost onto trucks, gather their tools and hop aboard. One group will plant trees along the Pan-American Highway, while the others will tend to gardens along an expressway.

They work until about noon, then go to school—which is part of the arrangement. Last year, some of the Chikos also took a six-month gardening course at the National Agriculture University. At first, César Capo, 21, was intimidated by the academic surroundings, but he and his companions soon found they had learned the basics through the city program. He enjoyed learning more about pest control, plant propagation and species names.

Capo, who also spent time on the street as a teenager, now has a two-year-old son and dreams of starting his own small business. The hope is not far-fetched. Manthoc youngsters have formed a small garden-care business that receives logistical support from Emape. And last year, the Chikos Ecológicos were chosen from among more than 1,000 groups competing for donations from the World Bank. The goal of their US$20,000 project is to establish a small business that would make compost and humus.

Business launch looms

The project began last November and the Chikos are producing about six tons of compost a month using manure donated by a nearby racetrack. They will receive training in setting up and running a small business, with the goal of having their own self-sustaining operation underway by November of this year.

With half of Peruvians living on less than $2 a day and more than half of the working population in the informal sector—mainly street vending—one of the Chikos’ drawing cards is the chance to learn a marketable skill.

Nico Soto, 18, recently became a full-time Emape employee. Having lived on the street from ages 11 to 15, the job is the culmination of an uphill battle that included a stint in a juvenile detention facility. “That changed me,” he says. “I lost two years of my life there.”

Emape, however, cannot put all Chikos Ecológicos on the payroll. And if they leave the program, there is the risk they will succumb to what one refers to as “the call of the street.”

Montoya would like to see the program teach other skills so kids could fill one of the city’s quirky informal job niches. “Here in Lima, a gardener has to be able to fix the house from head to foot,” Montoya says. Homeowners often ask the gardener to fix a leaky faucet or repair an electrical problem. Those skills would give the kids a better opportunity, but the training is beyond Emape’s scope.

Still, many of the Chikos now have a future. “This takes us farther and farther from the street, from drugs,” says Abel Barbosa, 27, who is working in the World Bank-funded compost project and looks forward to helping build the small business. “We’re starting a new life.”