'We are not all criminals': Young Salvadorans are hoping for a better life at home

Navas (left) with her students at the Forever Foundation in Soyapango, El Salvador which aims at giving youngsters tools to earn a living and prevent them from having to migrate. Photos: Stanley Estrada/AFP

Cristina Navas was 10 when her teenage brother, a gang member, was slain. Despite a life overshadowed ever since by poverty-fueled violence, Navas is doing all she can not to join the exodus of migrants from El Salvador.

Now 22, she lives with her mother and a sister in Soyapango in the country's northeast, a populous city under the constant shadow of gangs who terrorise residents.