It has been a good year for Green Life Volunteers – we had amazing volunteers who helped to teach English, at the sea-turtle conservation project, in the Monteverde reserve, and at organic farming projects.
During the last year we have established new project locations, including Perez Zeledon and Puerto Jimenez, and shifted our main focus a little bit towards projects in the South Pacific of Costa Rica. This is because the South Pacific regions are still amongst the less developed and less touristy areas of Costa Rica.
In the Southern regions there is a good trend to go a sustainable path: Farmers try to grow more organic and sustainably, and there are many eco-lodges catering to tourists who’d like to support environmental protection at the same time. But there are also many problems, including unemployment, agricultural mono-cultures, hunting, and forest loss.
Hence, volunteers are needed to further push the positive trend of sustainable development in the region. The presence of volunteers in the region helps in several ways. Firstly, volunteers support the projects with their helping hands – often the projects wouldn’t have the money to pay for a worker. Secondly, supporting sustainable and good-cause projects with volunteers may teach other community members that sustainability is more “desirable” and popular than environmentally and socially destroying practices. Thirdly, volunteers support the host families and thus contribute a little bit to their income.
Puerto Jimenez and Perez Zeledon are still in need of some improvements, for example Puerto Jimenez doesn’t have a dog rescue project yet or some parts of rural Perez Zeledon have very little access to environmental education. Thus Green Life Volunteers is working to develop and establish new projects ideas, to support the local communities. The new projects include to establish a dog rescue project in Puerto Jimenez and to introduce environmental education into some elementary schools in rural Perez Zeledon.
We’re constantly working to establish more project – and we also welcome your ideas :)! If you think you would like to establish your own project, or you have a certain skill that you’d like to share with Costa Rican’s, contact us! We’re very flexible and open for new ideas.
