Edge-ucate.org has teamed up with Nobel Peace Prize winner and Prime Minister of East Timor Jose Ramos Horta to engage youth around the world.

In his recent trip to Denver, Prime Minister Ramos Horta backed up his commitment made earlier in the month in East Timor and officially endorsed and committed to funding Edge-ucate.org’s 1.05 million dollar Youth Integration and Development Initiative in East Timor.

Dr. Peter Van Arsdale of the University of Denver, Prime Minister of Timor-Leste Dr. Jose Ramos Horta, Edge-ucate.org Executive Director Justin Kaliszewski, Edge-ucate.org Director of Country Operations-US Tait Robinson

The world’s youngest and poorest nation, East Timor lies in the Indonesian archipelago just northwest of Darwin, Australia. A beautiful country characterized by white sandy beaches and a wide variety of cultural diversity, East Timor is also wracked by the early developments of gang violence: a problem Edge-ucate.org aims to stamp out with an initiative that will see the opening of six new youth centers in Dili, the Timorese capital over the course of the next eight months.

Working in conjunction with the government of East Timor, Students and Professors from the University of Denver's Graduate School of International Studies, and several local partners, Edge-ucate.org seeks to engage youth in East Timor with nightly activities aimed at keeping them off the streets, and daily classes intended to give them the tools and skills they need to enter a reinvigorated Timorese economy.

The streets of Dili are filled with gun-toting peacekeeping soldiers, its streets punctuated by the sound of tank tread on concrete, but now they are filled with a new weapon…hope.