Great opportunity to foster connections and get out of your element!

I was a staff member for this program in summer 2020, and I was so impressed by not only the communities we immersed ourselves in and the curriculum we taught, but also the group of teens that participated. Get involved with AMIGOS if you want the best opportunity possible to step outside of your comfort zone, learn about the region with a heavy dose of cultural humility, and experience what true collaboration with partner organizations looks like. In this project, we spent 10 days in a cloud forest community, learning about sustainability and conservation through a combination of local tours, impactful volunteer opportunities, in-house workshops, and ecotourism excursions. We then ventured to a remote town on the Atlantic coast, accessible only by river boat, where we worked with a partner organization to protect the local sea turtle population against poachers and other threats. We built upon each work or volunteer opportunity with interactive lessons on power and privilege, intercultural exchange, climate justice, and youth leadership. Students who choose to do AMIGOS care deeply about the world and their place in it, and this trip has the power to widen their perspective even further! I would strongly recommend it to those who are traveling to the region for the first time, as Costa Rica is an easy country to travel through, and has a very developed ecotourism base to learn from.