Costa Rica rural community support fund

Helping others and saving ourselves!

As an active member of the Drake Bay community, the Corcovado Foundation cannot close our eyes to the needs surrounding us. When the pandemic hit and Costa Rica closed its borders, we realized that the people from our community would hurt so much.

We couldn’t help everybody, but we set our goal to identify those that needed the most help. This wasn’t hard; many of these people were our neighbors or the grandparents of the children we provide with environmental education, or we knew their children, and we knew that as tourism died, their jobs had disappeared. Also, people gave us leads: an old lady living alone in a shanty house, under a couple of tin sheets, a dirt floor, and a $100 pension; a senior mother taking care alone of her son with special needs, or a couple of sick elders living miles from town on an isolated farm.
We found so much need and so much isolation. This effort to identify disadvantaged people was a true revelation and a change of direction for our organization. Human poverty is a social issue and a problem that the Corcovado Foundation ought to tackle as part of the ecosystem.

This act of love happened thanks to you and people like you. We have raised over $30,000 on aid for those most in need. Our donors, volunteers, and members were the driving force behind these efforts. I feel that everybody was excited to help. In this time of despair, being able to make a difference in somebody’s life was a fantastic way to light up those dark months of seclusion and isolation. The opportunity to support others with time or money was a great way to save ourselves from the gloom of the pandemic.

During the pandemic, we delivered food packages to 50 people, over 1020 packages over a year. When the borders opened, we identified those, who even before the pandemic, had been forgotten by the system or their families, and we continue to support them. We have also helped families in their time of desolation. Two weeks ago, a family lost their house to a fire and lost all their possessions. The community joined efforts to help, and the foundation united them to make a difference. To this date, we have delivered over 1200 packages of food, which equals around 17,000 US invested in relief. We will continue to bring these packages full of relief and love for as long as we can.