Student volunteers in Costa Rica
For any interested in Costa Rica and stay for longer: volunteering may be an option.
We wrote about different projects of volunteer work in the past (green sea turtle project). An actual story in the Salt Lake Tribune gives us an other show case of volunteering in Costa Rica is common and makes sense. Here an abstract of the story:
US-student Cheryl Slagowski likes dventure; she likes traveling abroad too. And interacting with another culture. The solution? She embarked on a recent humanitarian mission to Costa Rica. She signed on with Global Volunteers, a St. Paul, Minn., nonprofit that provided her with the best travel times for her journey to the Central American country’s Monteverde Cloud Forest region.
Arrived in Costa Rica, she was greeted by the smiling faces of her team leader and a friend from the US. Together, the trio bumped along a dirt road in the mountains to join 17 other volunteers who were busily digging a trench for a retaining wall. The project was aimed at preventing rainwater from swamping an elementary school in the remote village of Los Tornos.
The travel expenses - between $1,595 and $2,696 apiece - paid for food, lodging, project supplies and related costs. Nor did the volunteers enjoy five-star accommodations in their hotel in Santa Elena, where their rustic rooms were equipped with a single bed and the proprietor crafted the chairs for the dining-room table out of tree stumps.
The men in the village worked alongside the visiting workers. The men’s wives and mothers provided lunch, dishing up elaborate meals that were prepared on a simple wood-burning stove. “There was nothing there,” said Slagowski, “but they would create the most incredible meals I had in my life. They would pick pineapples, mangoes and bananas right from their garden.”
Still, Slagowski’s foray into Costa Rica was not all work and no play. She and others did take time to tour and zip around on zip lines through the beautiful forest canopy.
Slagowski’ final comment:”I would go back.”
Read the whole story here…
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