Community Center : Roof And Playground

2025 ! It’s a new year, calling for new beginnings !

We are creating a Community Center for our village and our Bio-Region.

To give you some context :

We live in a rural area of Costa Rica, in the “Diamante Valley” Bio region, known by the locals as the villages of Tinamastes, Las Tumbas, San Salvador, la Florida… Villages being part of the Barú Region.

Our bio region is pretty particular because there are possibly the same amount of “Foreigners” and Locals from Costa Rica. We see 2 cultures meeting each other : the “alternative international multi culture” meeting with the rural Costa Rican Culture.

This is still very new for all the local people here, 20 years ago, only very few foreigners use to live here. So today in our local community we can notice some gaps : different cultures, different interests or preferences, different languages…

In some ways it feels like there are 2 different worlds happening in the same place… A foreigner mix of people from all around the world merging in a few Tico villages.

With that, our villages are pretty similar to many other villages in the world for a common reason : We don’t have a proper Community Center. We have restaurants, super markets, local markets, churches, soccer fields…

There are community spaces but they are only open while events or meetings are happening. In the center of our villages nowadays, it’s not easy to find a covered space that is welcoming and open to the public..

By having such open spaces, we invite the habitants of the village to naturally gather somewhere, and connect. As we get more often together the village can benefits from the connections that are done in the center of the village.

This vision of Community Centers has been alive for some years, the last months we have been able to bring it close to become a reality…

In Las Tumbas, by the soccer field, there is a communal space(salon) where take place meetings of the comity in charge of the soccer field and the salon.

Some of us being part of the comity, we shared the idea of creating an extension of the existing structure in order to create an open community space, and a playground for children.

We also presented the project to the soccer team and different people involved in the village and so far everyone welcomed the idea.

We are still so happy that this initiative got green lights ! Getting trust and permission was the first steps of this project, and making it happen, that is what we have been working on the last 2 months.

Few of us get together regularly to discuss how the structure will be, we took measurements, drone pictures, made drawings and a model, talked about materials and costs. We stay in communication about dimensions and other details with the people in the comity and soccer team..

As we got a clearer idea of our project...

We got into the phase of presenting the project to more people in the village, in the bio-region and on social media. At the same time we started a fundraiser to gather the funds needed to buy the materials for the roof and Playground (5000$)

We organized a beautiful event on the 18th of January, we had games, food, local music, a nice mix of locals and foreigners. We were able to present the project to more people in the area. Everyone enjoyed the event and the initiative to build a roof for the community.

It takes effort to make such events happen: planning, making flyers, advertising, buying food, preparing food, prepare the space, organize necessities for the event, serve food, clean up and put things back into place.

We are very happy we did it ! Service from the heart inspire more service from the heart…

Also this didn’t bring that much money to our fundraiser, it was a beautiful gathering to present the project to the community.

For fundraising, we have been reaching out for donations on social media and in local groups chats, or talk directly to individuals.

We went twice to the local market on Tuesday morning and we are planning to go there an other time soon. So far we are amazed and so grateful that we gathered around 3000$.

We still need some more to be able to buy the materials and deliver them. That is the very first step of the construction. When the materials are delivered, we can start and bring volunteers to help us prepare everything.

Our plan is to build during this month(March), various people and workers offered to help us when we gonna start working on it. We are very very grateful for the support we received so far, and we are exited to see the fruits of community work. And enjoy it !

We are planning for an other event at the end of March, hopefully the roof will be built at this time and we will get enthusiastic people and energy to collaborate to make the playground happen !

Thank you for reading our report, keep following us :)