Full Narrative

by 2012 Project Director Irene Malarky

Although the 2012 Pérez Zeledón, Costa Rica project is built upon a foundation of years of collaboration with Casa de la Juventud, the focus, and in time the financial needs, are quite different from any other AMIGOS program to date.   We, the project staff, believe that providing AMIGOS volunteers and their local counterparts with the opportunity to partake in educational/cultural excursions during their stay in three distinct ecosystems will increase volunteer satisfaction and the quality of extracurricular educational activities.  Additionally, these excursions will work to promote cross-cultural understanding between AMIGOS volunteers and their local counterparts.

The 2012 Pérez Zeledón pilot project brings together the traditional AMIGOS community experience and Casa de la Juventud’s model of service learning in National Parks.  The aim of the project is to provide the AMIGOS volunteers and the local volunteers with three weeks of experience in three different National Parks and three weeks to bring the knowledge and skills learned back to their communities.  The work done in the National Parks will range from trail building to volunteer run extracurricular activities.  The intention of the proposed excursions would be to enrich this experience.

The focus of the Pérez Zeledón project can be summed up to environmental education and service learning.   The ideas and plan for this project came about from conversations and collaboration with Casa de la Juventud who is excited and motivated to work with AMIGOS to create a successful pilot project with the aforementioned focus.  Community members throughout Pérez Zeledón  will be involved in the facilitation of the camps and will send one youth to each camp throughout the project as well as special invites and cooks.  The service learning aspect of the project as well as the educational excursions involved will happen June 23^rd – June 30^th, July 8^th-July 14^th and July 22^nd-July 28^th and will involve a team of staff from AMIGOS and Casa de la Juventud, AMIGOS volunteers, local youth and community members.  The above list of involved parties can also be considered the beneficiaries of the project and the wished-for excursions.

In regards to the longevity of the project, we believe that providing AMIGOS volunteers and their local counterparts with additional educational and recreational activities/excursions will encourage future involvement in the program of both communities in Pérez Zeledón as well as Casa de la Juventud.  Through a number of meetings with Casa de la Juventud it has come to our attention that one of their primary objectives of this collaboration is the satisfaction of volunteers, both international and national.  For Casa, satisfied volunteers equate to volunteers that work harder and are more motivated to organize extracurricular activities in their own communities. 

In kind, the excursions will foment cross-cultural understanding in several ways.  First, by providing space, time and resources for volunteers and involved communities to plan and execute educational excursions these parties will learn lessons in collaboration.  Secondly, by providing recreational activities we hope to support the growth of meaningful friendships.  These friendships and working relationships will be directed by several activities highlighting the importance of diversity.

Because the structure of the project is so nascent to AMIGOS there will be an increased emphasis on monitoring and evaluation to ensure that future projects are successful.  This will be a priority for both Casa de la Juventud and AMIGOS.  We will evaluate the project and each of its components as to pinpoint which aspects were useful and motivating for volunteers and community members.  Ultimately, the monitoring of success of the project in the communities of Pérez Zeledón  will be done by Casa de la Juventud as AMIGOS will not be on the ground year-round.  That being said, through participatory evaluations during project close-out our staff will be collecting information on which parts of the program were viewed as valuable and which were not.  This is especially important in relation to the extra excursions that we are hoping to receive funds for.  If these excursions are seen as an essential and motivating activity for volunteers and communities we will strongly encourage that funding for these activities be included in the base budget for the 2013 Pérez Zeledón  project.  By effectively evaluating and modifying the program we hope to make this type of structure a sustainable one for future years.

The success of the project will be measured in myriad ways.  First and foremost we will be able to quantify the success by the progress that volunteers have made on the projects in the National Parks and by the number of hours of extracurricular activities facilitated in host communities.  In a more qualitative sense, we will collect feedback from volunteers in regards to the level of satisfaction with the program.  We will also gauge the level of success through the lens of AMIGOS’ objectives of youth engagement, cross cultural understanding and service to the community.

Support This Project:

Make an online donation here, and please specify Perez Zeledon Bevil Grant in the comments section. Any funds raised above the $1400 will go to funding other Bevil Grants unless otherwise specified. Thank you!