Education Costa Rica Project #18714

Give the Gift of Education to Children in Poverty

by The Community Action Alliance

Project Report | Aug 29, 2018
Three High School Graduations on the Horizon -- Opportunities for Good Careers?

By Scott McAnally | Project Leader, CAA Education Committee Leader

Looking forward to Graduation, 2018, 1 of 3

On July 21st, 2018, CAA’s Education Committee presented twenty-four escuela and colegio scholarship students their second term scholarship vouchers, and encouraged them to finish the school year with strong grades. Having graduated our first high school scholarship student in December, 2016, we are pleased that three students are on track to graduate in December, 2018. This CAA scholarship program supports students in poverty to earn a high school education; and for most families, a graduation represents the first in the family!

However, the chance to get into a good career path will require more than just a high school education, given that most of the good paying job growth in Costa Rica will be in technical fields and tourism. How prepared are our graduating high school students to get the additional training required to access these jobs? That is the focus of this report.

Few Costa Rican public schools appear to have counseling resources to provide career orientation, university or vocational skill planning for students. We have learned that high school counselors spend most of their energy on the socio-economic issues presented by a large student population leaving little time for career and higher education counseling. And, no U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics or Employment Commission equivalent agencies exist in Costa Rica to help students identify the demand for jobs, required skills, and applicant to job matching, required to get workers into the available jobs. Essentially, a graduating high school or university student is pretty much limited to identifying job fairs and doing their own research to locate employers that are hiring, and available positions----only to recognize that additional specialized training, apprentice experience, or language proficiency is required. Of course, students that are able to tackle this maze themselves, are already demonstrating their resourcefulness, but many others require some coaching and counseling

Recognizing this counseling-information gap, and the importance of additional higher education to get into a valued career, four CAA Education Committee members with knowledge of university admission requirements, financial aid programs, and technical training opportunities, teamed up to offer our three graduating students a career planning, higher education orientation session in a Saturday workshop. The Workshop covered four important topics:

University application deadlines and admission requirements,
Preparation and training available to help students get ready to take the required university entrance exams,
Funding through public university scholarships based on financial need. and
Other non-university technical and language training opportunities (and relevance to the better-paying job market).

This initial orientation session confirmed that our three graduating students, from San Ramon's best public high schools, had received no higher education or career counseling information. Two of the graduating students received Academic Excellence Awards for their 95 or over GPA's last year, and will likely have the grades to get into a public university, but the third student will need extensive preparation to pass the university entrance exams. And, they were unaware of the time deadlines, financial and admission requirements, and financial aid opportunities to help them plan for further education. At three or four months before graduation, none of the graduating students really had a sense of what to do next.

As one Education Committee member observed "Costa Rica will always have some agricultural jobs requiring heavy labor for young men that cannot attend or do not do well in university, and many women also do manual labor, but the good-paying career options for un-trained women are much more limited than for men. It is extremely important, especially for young women, to get early counseling to focus on careers in demand such as accounting, business managment, info technology, engineering, veterinarians, or the law. Encouraging young women to venture into less traditional roles and supporting them during the process, is of critical importance for Latinas, especially those that were raised in single parent, financially poor households where few opportunities exist other than finding a man and raising babies".

To fill this information gap for our CAA Scholarship Students, the Education Committee agreed to extend this higher education orientation session to all our scholarship students, beginning just after completion of the 9th grade. The last 2-3 years of high school are of critical importance in gaining the grade averages and focusing students on a path that includes higher education or technical skills training. This orientation session will be a follow-on session to our regular December year-end socio-economic/academic interviews that we hold with the student and parents.

By focusing students earlier on the challenges of life-after-high school, these students and their parents should be better positioned to move into the higher or technical education tracts that will prepare them for in-demand jobs. The CAA Education Committee is committed to provide the additional counseling support necessary to prepare these graduating students for the next big step towards a life without poverty.

With the support of GlobalGiving donors and our volunteers in Costa Rica, the Community Action Alliance will provide almost $8,000 in educational assistance in 2018 for families in poverty in the San Ramon area, and career and higher educational counseling. W are all contributing what we can, financially or through information sharing, to build a better tomorrow for these scholarship students--one student at a time!

Another Focused High School Graduate 2018, 2 of 3

Colegio Graduating 2018, Volley-baller! 3 of 3

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