Upskill a Community to Fight Poverty in Costa Rica

Introduction 

Our project is supporting, empowering and training our local community members and providing critical funding to allow this community to work together and build on the infrastructure to allow the local community to grow, develop education and work to create income-driven projects to become self-sustainable..

Report 

We have provided the framework and support and worked closely with the community to tackle current issues and challenges. Providing training and vital funding to keep improving infrastructure to promote a sustainable future that generates local income and increased access to quality education. It costs $50 for one woman to joining a training and development workshop. 

Thank you for your support

Introduction 

This community faces serious life challenges on a daily basis. Without support they are unable to break the poverty cycle. Government funding is limited and doesn't help our community, so we focus on empowering and supporting this community to tackle social and economic challenges and help implement solutions, designed by themselves. Solutions include infrastructure, minority inclusion, alternative income generation, education, healthy habits and conservation all that will protect lives.

Report 

Education is key to breaking this cycle. Our project works to support, empower and train our local community members as well as provide critical funding to allow this community to work together and build on the infrastructure to allow the local community to grow, develop education and work to create income-driven projects to become self-sustainable. A $50 donation will cover the cost of one women to attend a full skills development course improving her employability opportunities.

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Thank you for your support

Introduction 

El Cocal suffers from high levels of immigration resulting in huge cultural differences and high unemployment, substance abuse and general despondency. This is a hard place to live, most often especially for children. Limited funding for schools means schools are only open for 1/2 days. There are very few safe spaces for both children and adults to gather, play & learn

Report 

The most important part of this project is awareness and empowering our local community members to tackle the issues. With their passion, we provide the framework and support and work closely with them to tackle the issues. By providing them with the training and vital funding to build the infrastructure in the community we allow them to promote a sustainable future that includes local income generation and increased access to quality education! Just $25 will feed a child breakfast the most important meal of the day for the entire month!

Thank you for your support

It’s certainly a challenging time for our community in Costa Rica. While due to COVID we had to pause the majority of our operations we continued to support our community through awareness of COVID preventative measures and we help keep funding the majority of our local team through lockdowns. 

In October we finally were able to get back to engaging the community and following COVID guidelines we found it essential to take people’s minds away from COVID and begin our business as usual free workshops for the community. 

Over the passed few weeks we have covered a wide range of topics that include how to care for the most important mangrove habitat that surrounds the community in Cocal and play a very important park in the local ecosystem. We also began to run educational workshops that start to engage and welcome the community members to engage with our project. We started with workshops on the history of the local area and this was very popular and rewarding. 

We want to engage our local community further and begin to offer English lessons and other skills that will help upskill the community in 2021. 

Dear Supporters,

From each of the experiences that we all live, we must learn something new, and that is a fact during this year.

Despite the fact that many of us had structured plans about what we were going to do, we had to face great challenges that we had not anticipated, changes that initially could generate uncertainty, but from which we learned little by little.

One of our main pillars is quality education, with which we always try to provide knowledge to people so that they have greater opportunities, hence facing a pandemic, meant a change, not a complete barrier, during the period of confinement by COVID, here in Quepos, it was not possible for us to continue teaching English classes for students who regularly attended our lessons, so we had to adapt to the circumstances and decided to continue teaching classes using technological tools, in our case Skype.

Initially, we were not completely sure that we could count on the attendance of many of the students since not everyone had easy access to the internet or smartphones , but happily many of them began to attend, something new for them and for us, which taught us that wanting is power. The classes managed to strengthen the knowledge they had, clarify doubts, and learn new topics that will facilitate the participation of students at a higher level, once we can re-teach the lessons in the community.

Members of the El Cocal community have had to face different difficulties during the times of the pandemic, but at the same time, they have managed to unify more in search of a common good.

Thanks to the participation in community development workshops and the initiative of one of the community leaders, Giovanni, they communicated through WhatsApp groups and organized different activities, always trying to respect health protocols to avoid any inconvenience, two were organized different sales of hot vegetable soup, in order to raise funds to cover the expenses of water and electricity of the Community Centre and another to raise funds and to install a sink at the main entrance of the Community Centre and maintain the sewer and drain of the bathroom.

We must take into consideration that for the members of the community, the good work that we have done to maintain the community centre, such as the change of the roof that we managed to do thanks to the collaboration of all of you, are motivation to take their own initiatives and achieve their goals, seeing the results of everyone's cooperation. Now the members of the community have a more suitable place to carry out different activities and the children a safer place to learn and play.

Thinking about future projects within the community, where we would like to try to create a community garden, during these days in the patio of our house in Quepos, we have started a small garden with vegetables to see if the weather is favourable and the products grow well. . Fortunately, many of them are bearing fruit and in a few days and months we will be able to collect lettuce, potatoes, tomatoes, celery, onions, peppers, beets and pineapples; so we would hope that with everyone's help, in the near future, we will be able to implement the crops, first around the Community Centre and then in some houses in the community.

Working with our partners is always valued and of importance, since we can expand our contribution, and it is the case with ASOMACAO, Ana María is the head of this association that watches over the welfare of scarlet macaws, and in previous days speaking with She told us that the macaw population is increasing and that it will be necessary to build new nests for future incubations, with which we hope to collaborate with it, since it is a native species of the area that is in the process of natural reintegration and we would like to be able to collaborate, so together, with your help, we can continue working in this project.

Of everything, we always try to take the most positive, and with all the ups and downs of this year, it is thanks to the collaboration of all the people who with their donations help us to achieve our goals, objectives that are always redeemable and profitable from the best way, so for all of us it is always a huge thank you for being part of this path that leads us to make dreams come true.

During these times of adversity, we want to extend thanks for your collaboration in our projects. It is thanks to each of your contributions that we can strengthen all the work we do in the community.

With Gratitude

Costa Rica Community