Zua is a non-profit organization created by a group the united in 1998.  The foundation´s original supporters embraced the common cause of assisting high-risk children.  Zua continues to work for a more positive future for children whose environments may cause them to fall prey to delinquency and drug addiction. Realizing that these children have done nothing to deserve dire living conditions, ZUA attempts to provide them with opportunities and resources.  The foundation ´s long-term goal is to create a future for each child in which he or she can enjoy the basic human rights of personal dignity and a sense of contribution to family and society.

Although it hopes to eventually reach out to children from birth to the age of eighteen, at present ZUA applies its program primarily to children aged 7-13.  The current targeted age group includes children who have ever attempt school, or who have been expelled from school.   A good part of this population lives in extreme poverty; their family relations are also often precarious.   Within their impoverish neighborhoods may live many caring adults who clearly recognize this crisis faced by their communitys young people, but who have not be able to organize programs of assistance because of their own extremely limited situations.     Without vital academic and social skills, adolescents may feel convinced that their only choice for survival is to enroll in a gang band.  While exact calculations are impossible to achieve, the group of Colombian children at risk in this manner probably numbers in hundreds of thousand.

Approximately seventy children attend the ZUA program at its single site in Patio Bonito (Pretty Patio) but a waiting list of over a hundred qualified applicants grows daily.  On any given block in the poor zones of Bogotá (Colombias capital), one may find ten or more children who could profit from such a program.  In all, this city may contain more than half a million young people who, without meaningful intervention in form of proper nutrition, a safe environment, and schooling, will eventually swell the ranks of marginalized delinquents.