Upskill a Community to Fight Poverty in Costa Rica

For the past several months, the team in Quepos has been renovating a spare storage room at our school in El Cocal, with the goal in mind of turning this room into a classroom and resource room.  After a lot of sweat and sore muscles, the volunteers successfully pulled off a complete transformation of the space, and we now have a classroom out of which to base our operations in the school. The creation of this classroom is extremely important to GVI’s work in the school, because it now makes it possible for our volunteers to work one on one with students that need a little extra help in order to catch up with the rest of the class.  It also allows us to take a small group of the best English students from each grade and give them more concentrated attention in order to let them progress to their full potential. 

The creation of this new classroom has everyone in the project very excited – the teachers are excited because they can now be more effective with their lessons while knowing that the students that need more concentrated help are receiving it, and the volunteers are thrilled because it lets them form a stronger connection to their students.  All in all, this is a big step towards GVI’s ultimate goal here in Costa Rica – furthering the education of students in under resourced schools and giving them the one on one attention and encouragement that they crave.  To follow the happenings in Costa Rica, take a look at our blog at www.gvicostarica.blogspot.com .

A two week school vacation was coming up and the team in Quepos wanted to do something special for the kids in El Cocal. There is such a wealth of exciting opportunities here in Manuel Antonio, right on their doorstep, that these kids do not get a chance to experience. So we decided to organize a field trip! We got in touch with the ‘Refugio de Vida Silvestre and Mariposario’ which is a private wildlife reserve funded and operated by the Si Como No resort right here in Manuel Antonio. We explained our project and they very kindly offered us free entry and a personalized guided tour. The property consists of a 25 acre reserve boasting the same plant and animal life as the Manuel Antonio National Park. They also have a butterfly garden and reptile lagoon consisting of rescued, caiman, crocodiles and tortoises.

Once the kids got wind of the idea we knew it would be a success as in the weeks leading up to the trip, every day in the centre they would ask ‘vamos al mariposario manana?  We had such a good response that we had to organize 3 trips so that everyone could go. The first day we took 1^st and 2^nd graders, the second 3^rd and 4^th and the third 5^th and 6^th and even some kids in high school asked if they could come and how could we say no.

In the week leading up to the trip the community centre activities were very much focused on butterflies and nature activities. The volunteers were just as excited as the kids and put together some great activities for each day. Each excursion was lead by a team of 4 volunteers, they organized age appropriate activities for each group based on what they would learn and observe during the trip. We had art projects, creative writing, word searches, quizzes, butterfly life cycle games…

A total of 44 kids attended over the 3 days! We were even accompanied by some of the children’s family members, which was great way to strengthen our bonds within the community and share a lovely day out together. These kinds of activities can only serve to make our program more integrated within the community itself and we hope to develop similar extracurricular activities in the future.

The staff at the refugio were absolutely fabulous, giving us their time and expertise. We are hoping to collaborate with the future. http://www.wildliferefugecr.com/