Youth Leadership in Costa Rica

This itinerary is the starting point for your tour, but it’s not set in stone. If there are days you would like to change, or specific places you’d like to go, we can work with you to create a personalized program that fits the needs of you and your students.

Day 1: San Jose

Depart from the USA. Arrive in the Costa Rican capital of San José and meet your ACIS Tour Manager. Start exploring this vibrant and bustling city with a visit to the Mercado Central, founded in 1880, for an opportunity to interact with local vendors and initiate discussions on sustainability in food and agriculture.

Day 2: San Jose

This morning your first leadership workshop will be at Costa Rican Humanitarian Foundation (CRHF), operating since 1997 with a focus on using education as a way to fight poverty. Learn about the female founder and director's work, how her efforts and leadership have impacted one of the San José's highest risk communities and how collaborators in that community have been empowered to reach out to other communities and transfer their skills and knowledge. In the afternoon enjoy a Global Exchange focused on comparative learning and sharing dynamics with students from a local city school and compare perspectives on the meaning of leadership.

Day 3: Monteverde

Journey to your next leadership workshop at a responsible fishery on the Gulf of Nicoya, lead by a local fisherman who leads the way in sustainable fishing in his own hometown. Students will both learn about marine conservation efforts, and have the opportunity to meet and discuss challenges with the leadership of a community that is in great need of economic development. Then continue up to Monteverde.

Day 4: Monteverde

Today explore this important and fascinating ecosystem. Originally settled in the 1950s by a group of Quakers from Alabama, Monteverde Cloud Forest is the leader of sustainable communities within Costa Rica and is home to more than 400 species of birds, 100 species of mammals and 2,500 species of plants including the jaguar, ocelot, Baird's tapir, three-wattled bellbird, bare-necked umbrellabird, and the famously elusive resplendent quetzal. Start with a bird's-eye perspective on the forest, as you enjoy the Monteverde Canopy Tour's thrilling series of platforms and zip-lines. Then engage with one of the community's leaders during a lecture on what makes Monteverde so different, and how your efforts can help the three-wattled bellbird and jaguars migrate between the mountains and the shoreline. Later, a leadership workship gives you the chance to assist a local NGO conservation council with their efforts to save the bellbird.

Day 5: Guanacaste Coast

Drive to the Nicoya Peninsula in the province of Guanacaste, one of the rare few of the world’s longevity hotspots known as “Blue Zones.” Students will partake in a lecture by one of the leaders of the local NGO focused on environmental and social responsibility that attempts to save the tropical forests by teaching farmers how to produce organic honey. Meet the leaders and the family behind this project as you gain insight into what this means and how these lessons could be used to impact your own communities at home during a delicious and authentic “Blue Zone” lunch at their own house.

Day 6: Guanacaste Coast

During today's leadership workshop and Global Exchange you will collaborate with community entrepreneurs to host an up-cycling workshop for local kids. Discuss the importance of developing sound business skills through education and finding self-empowerment in outside help. The ultimate focus is on how to establish markets that can both benefit the community locally and our planet at large by finding novel ways to re-purpose simple items in an effort to reuse or recycle waste and generate profit (such as turning the inner tubes of bicycles, cars and airplanes into fabricated fashion accessories) Later this afternoon enjoy time to relax on the beach.

Day 7: Guanacaste Coast

Your STEM-focused leadership workshop today has you meeting and working with local coastal science and research leaders as part of an Intertidal Explorer Program. Explore the five intertidal zones as you snorkel along inshore reefs, gathering and comparing observations to learn about specie adaptations and the human impacts on the physical conditions and organisms present. In the afternoon, discover more of what this amazing region has to offer at your own pace. During tonight's final dinner, you and your fellow classmates will enjoy recapping the trip's unique leadership education experiences. Reflect on some of the leadership skills you have learned and how you can impactfully apply those skills upon your return home. (Please note that flight scheduling may require your last night to be spent in San José.)

Day 8: Departure

Depart for the USA.