Learn Spanish & Volunteer

“Volunteering in Costa Rica may be a very different experience than what you expect. Our volunteer programs are a non-profit branch of our school, and are all managed directly with the local project coordinators, meaning there is not an Intercultura staff member at every project, just at our Heredia school campus. On the plus side, it is much cheaper than going through an international organization that has staff accompanying groups of volunteers to every destination. However, it also means there is not the level of on-site orientation, organization, training or supervision that more expensive, international service-learning programs might offer.

What this means for volunteers is that you must expect the unexpected, which might include any number of changes or differences from what you ideally wished for, for example:

• You signed up to teach at a kindergarten, but there is an unexpected teacher’s strike while you are there, meaning you will have to do something else, like substituting for a class or doing games and activities that you must come up with on the spot. Or you might be reassigned to do other tasks at the school, like making materials, games, etc for future classes. Or perhaps they need to sand and varnish the desks, and will ask volunteers to do this while the kids are not at school.
• While working at a wild animal rescue center, you are not allowed to touch the animals as per Costa Rican environmental law, but rather can only feed them and clean their cages. Some days, you are even asked to welcome any tourists that visit the site and possibly give them a tour of the facility.
• You asked to do field work, but the conservation center was asked to host a national sustainable-agricultural round table, which means there is no one to take you out to the actual conservation projects. You may be asked to count trees instead, or participate in activities for local children, or create a lesson plan in English and teach kids about conservation, or play soccer at the town field, or dig drainage ditches for water management systems, or rake the lodging property.
• You might be going every day to the turtle project in the organization’s pick-up truck, which then breaks down one day, and you have to walk an hour to the project, or you must be willing to do whatever else the organization may need (maintenance, signage, cleaning) or maybe the camp coordinator is on their day off, and you will have to look for ideas for projects and take the lead on getting them started. Worst case scenario, take the day off and explore the area!
• Perhaps you were hoping to be at a project with lots of other volunteers who speak your language, but when you arrive it is just you and one other volunteer from a different country and communication is hard. You are forced to rely on the little Spanish you know and look for the project staff or go outside the project and seek out locals to talk to and make friends with. Or, you can choose to spend some alone time reading, watching films, learning something online, or doing any other projects you enjoy.

A personal experience from one of our own staff members provides a perfect example of how expectations are – or are not- met. Here is her story: