FARO Oriente is located on the corner of Calzada Ignacio Zaragoza, and Pinos, between the Peñon Viejo and Acatitla Metro stations in the eastern Iztapalapa borough of Mexico City, which is one of the most populated, poor and violent.

[4] Near this is the Clubhouse, a large facility sponsored by the Boston Science Museum to allow 300 children and youths to use various creative tools from chisels to paper to digital instruments.

[4] There are plans to build a new theater facility, costing fifteen million pesos with a capacity of 450 people geared to plays and film screenings.

[2] Its purpose is to provides alternatives to gangs and drug addiction as well as promote experiences in self-organization, time management, creativity as well as personal and community development.

[1][6] Workshops are offered in photography, ceramics, carpentry, paintings, yoga, visual arts, poetry, tailoring, radio, capoeira, journalism, video and metalworking.

[2][4] The cultural center originally began as a construction to house offices related to the Iztapalapa borough government in the early 1990s, designed by architect Alberto Kalach but never completed.

[7] At the end of the decade, the site was handed over to the Mexico City government which spent eight million pesos to rehabilitate it for the current FARO center, which was inaugurated in March 2000.

[8] The success of FARO Oriente prompted the creation of three other similar centers in the Milpa Alta, Tláhuac and Gustavo A. Madero boroughs.