Our Local Impact

Students and Community Service

Community service is a pillar of the Outward Bound ethos, and every Costa Rica Outward Bound course includes at least one day of community service. Giving back to the local communities they visit on course develops students’ social consciences and teaches valuable life lessons about compassion, engagement and responsibility. We also offer a variety of course itineraries that include multi-day service projects. For more information on past service projects, please view the other tabs in this section.

Community Investment

Costa Rica Outward Bound inspires leadership, responsibility and compassion through adventure-based wilderness experiences. Providing growth opportunities for Costa Rican citizens, especially youth, is central to our mission. These local programs are offered free of charge or at a significant discount throughout the year in an effort to serve the communities in which we work. Courses offered to foreign nationals, at industry-competitive rates, help finance our local investment efforts.

Community Investment recipients include:

ProParques

ProParques is a Costa Rican NGO that provides training and administrative support to the national park system to help protect valuable natural resources and fragile ecosystems throughout the country. Costa Rica Outward Bound’s ongoing partnership with ProParques provides CPR, First Aid and other rescue technique training to national park staff. This ensures the safety of all park visitors and provides valuable professional development opportunities for park rangers. In 2011 alone, Costa Rica Outward Bound provided safety training to over 200 park staff.

Iztaru/Scouting

As in other parts of the world, scouting in Costa Rica is an opportunity for youth to build confidence, increase capabilities and acquire leadership skills. Our organization is heavily involved in supporting local scouting through our longstanding relationship with the Iztaru Girl Guides and Boy Scout Camp. Costa Rica Outward Bound provides ongoing safety and professional development training for Iztaru staff, as well as equipment and maintenance for Iztaru’s climbing tower, which offers a great mechanism for young people to develop leadership and teamwork skills in a challenging situation. Costa Rica Outward Bound’s involvement allows Iztaru to provide climbing/rappelling experiences for more than 5,000 local Boy Scouts and Girl Guides each year.

Piedras Blancas

Costa Rica Outward Bound’s longest-running community investment is with the Piedras Blancas community near San Isidro del General. This remote community is comprised of several families who have traditionally made their living through agriculture, but over the last 15 years Costa Rica Outward Bound has provided these families with employment opportunities that prevent further rainforest destruction. In turn, the community serves as a unique homestay destination for our students and provides them with an unparalleled cultural and language immersion experience in a remote rainforest locale.

Today, most of Costa Rica Outward Bound’s local instructors come from the Piedras Blancas community. Their wealth of cultural and rainforest knowledge is an immense benefit to the organization and, of course, to our students.

Although this mutually-beneficial partnership has now spanned almost two decades, the greatest resulting success story is the students themselves; Costa Rica Outward Bound and Piedras Blancas have provided a unique experience that has positively impacted the personal development of thousands of young people.

Clean Water (Buena Esperanza, Panama)

Located in the tropical archipelago of the Bocas del Toro region of Panama, the indigenous village of Buena Esperanza receives an average of 160 inches of rainfall each year, yet the isolated community has no access to safe groundwater or a municipal water supply. Water-borne diseases are a serious risk to the population, but rainwater collection provides a safe and efficient option for meeting Buena Esperanza’s water needs.
In May of 2011, students from the Journeys School, located in Jackson Hole, WY, participated in a six-day project supporting the efforts of a Peace Corps volunteer stationed in Buena Esperanza. Students spent one week helping install the community’s 28th rainwater catchment system. The project’s tough manual labor, building the support tower and installing the collection tank, challenged the group’s endurance, and the community interaction opened their eyes to a different way of life. Despite the challenges of the work, the response from the students, their teacher, and the community was nothing but positive. Many students voiced that this project was an eye-opening experience and their favorite element of an adventure-packed itinerary. The Peace Corps volunteer praised Journeys School for their “week of dedicated service, cultural sensitivity and respect.” Thanks to Journeys School’s trip, not only does another family in Buena Esperanza have access to safe drinking water, but a group of young people have furthered their global awareness and social consciousness.

Environmental Education and Nutrition (Amübri, Costa Rica)

Despite the continuing development and stability that has made Costa Rica the safest and wealthiest country in Central America, the indigenous communities that comprises 1% of the country’s population live in relative obscurity. The majority reside on reserves in the most isolated areas of Costa Rica’s southern territories with little access to the resources and infrastructure that is abundant in the more developed parts of the country.

For the past several years, students from the University of Alabama’s Alabama Action Abroad program have worked with our organization to implement a service learning project in the Talamanca Indigenous Reserve. This rural area, located on the border between Costa Rica and Panama, is home to members of both the Bribri and Cabecar peoples, many of whom still conserve their native languages and customs.

The Alabama project aims to educate university students about the culture of the Bribri tribe and its people, while also providing youth and community development services. Past projects have included:

• teaching elementary English with an interactive curriculum prepared prior to arrival
• leading teachers and students in a field day
• working alongside locals to make improvements to the village’s community center
• constructing trashcans and recycling bins as a deterrent to community litter
• planting community gardens

While in Talamanca, students learn basic Bribri phrases, the mythology surrounding the culture, traditional songs and dances, methods of gathering and preparing local foods and practice their Spanish skills.

Students have commented that their trip gave them access to a region of Costa Rica that tourists rarely see. They had an opportunity to learn about a new culture and make a positive impact on the community in a way that would have been impossible as part of a typical international experience.

Indoor Air Quality (San Juan del Sur Region, Nicaragua)

More than half of the world’s population, and 90% of its rural population, rely on dung, wood, crop waste or coal to meet their most basic energy needs. Rural, southern Nicaragua is no exception. In these communities, wood is the only readily available and affordable fuel source for many families. Residents, primarily women and children, spend hours of every day gathering firewood and tending wood fires.

Cooking with such solid fuels on the typical, open, “3-stone fire” produces indoor air pollution. In poorly ventilated dwellings, indoor smoke can exceed acceptable levels for small particles in outdoor air by 100-fold. In fact, the World Health Organization reports that indoor air pollution is responsible for the death of 1.6 million people every year, the equivalent of one death every 20 seconds. In Nicaragua, indoor air pollution is one of the country’s most lethal health risks, responsible for 4% of overall mortality.

Costa Rica Outward Bound’s Fall 2011 Tri-Country Semester partnered with local NGO Fundación Tierra in the Rivas region of Nicaragua to help build and install high efficiency wood burning cooking stoves. The closed combustion chamber of these stoves reduces indoor air pollution by up to 90%. The cooking stoves also turn wood into heat more efficiently, so less fuel is needed for each meal, reducing the demand on local forests.

Not only will our students’ work improve community health and reduce deforestation, it also improved quality of life. Families spend a significant amount of time and money buying, chopping and hauling wood to cook meals and heat water, all of which has to happen multiple times a day. The majority of this work falls to women and children. With less time each day spent on fuel, children are now more likely to attend school, and adults may participate in one of San Juan’s many adult-education programs, or just have more time to enjoy life.

Professional Training (San Jose, Costa Rica)

United World Colleges (UWC) is a community of 13 international schools dedicated to transformative education with the end goal of creating a more peaceful and sustainable world. Costa Rica’s UWC School has partnered with Costa Rica

Outward Bound in a variety of ways over the years to provide their students with growth opportunities. Costa Rica Outward Bound typically offers UWC students access to whitewater rafting trips twice each year. This adventure is free for UWC students and offers these young people a chance to experience the outdoors, bond with their classmates and test their personal limits.

In turn, the river trip is a vital component of Costa Rica Outward Bound’s Leadership Courses. International students on this semester course are focused on professional development for the outdoor industry, and have the opportunity to earn several certifications for whitewater rescue and rafting. The UWC trip offers Leadership students a real world opportunity to lead a river trip under the direct supervision of their instructors.

Habitat Protection and Restoration (Playa Tulín, Costa Rica)

Costa Rica is home to a number of organizations dedicated to the preservation of sea turtle species, both on its Caribbean and Pacific Coasts. Six different species of these endangered animals are present in Costa Rica, though they face increasing habitat destruction and threats from pollution, over fishing and poaching.

Hundreds of Costa Rica Outward Bound students have served with the Playa Tulín Sea Turtle Reserve, located just south of Playa Hermosa, to conduct habitat restoration, night patrols and animal release projects which help track, protect and preserve sea turtle species.

These projects can involve long hours, detailed record keeping and hard manual labor, but offer an unforgettable experience for students to interact with nature and a better chance at survival for these beautiful animals.

Community Physical Service (Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama)

The majority of Costa Rica Outward Bound’s single-day projects involve physical service. These projects benefit a variety of community organizations in rural and under-served communities including schools, health centers, wildlife refuges, and community centers.

Costa Rica Outward Bound students donate thousands of hours each year giving back to the communities they visit on course. Groups build recycling centers, paint schools, lead educational games for rural schoolchildren, remove waste from beaches, maintain trails, plant community gardens, and construct classrooms, all with the aim of building students’ relationships and connections with the global community.