Volunteering in Costa Rica
 

Hi,

I plan to go to Costa Rica for a month to volunteer but am overwhelmed by the amount of sites I've visited online. Can anyone recommend any place?

Thanks
K

I have a friend who volunteered with Cross Cultural Solutions in Peru and loved it. They have sites available in Costa Rica as well.

www.crossculturalsolutions.org

I started doing some investigation with them for my own hopeful trip to Peru and have been very impressed with their professionalism and accessibility to answer questions so far.

Have you looked into the Earthwatch program? It is well established and offers several choices in Costa Rica.

There is a new program opening operations in C.R. it is called grassrootvolunteer,I believe their website is under reconstruction now but they have very attractive rates and projects, and one things I liked about their ideas when my friend told me about them was that they are opened to mostly any other project that one may have on mind while thinking of volunteering,for exemple, if you know something like, playing the guitar, or painting, and they do not have that type of project running, they can set it up for you, they have the students, facilities, all they need now is you. they also provide spanish lessons and other courses that one can apply for.I found them on facebook by name grassrootvolunteer,and their email address is the name @gmail.com

latortugafeliz.com Good personal experience many scammers one should not have to pay large up front sums or high daily fees to "volunteer".Careful homework is required but many worthy causes depending on what you want to do. www.montanalinda.com has good immersion language volunteering combos at good prices. Well reviewed on the boards.

Happy Hunting!

I was browsing the tripadvsior boards for travel ideas and found this:

http://www.casitastenorio.com/activities/volunteer/

It looks really interesting and if I didn't already have my plans in place, I would contact them. Too bad I didn't learn about them until it was too late for me!

This is a very old thread - I think they've come and gone.

Are you a college student by chance? If so, I did one like 5 years ago called International Student Volunteers isvolunteers.org
They have programs all over, but I chose the Costa Rica one - you get to do a mix of volunteering and traveling. I wanted to do community development work, but there are also environmental options. My group lived in a town called Pejibaye in the central valley region. We all lived with host families, which really helps you learn Spanish and get accustomed to the culture. We volunteered at the local elementary school, taught English to adults, helped build a fresh water pipe, and painted buildings. We were in the town for 2 weeks. Then for the second two weeks, we traveled all over the country, Tortuguero, Playa Ocotal, Arenal Volcano, Monteverde, Manuel Antonio.. I'm sure I'm leaving some out. It was a great experience I highly recommend it!