Costa Rica rural community support fund

On June 24, thanks to your generous donation the little town of Rancho Quemado, became the first town its size to light up its sport field, in the Osa Peninsula.   The local people had expected this moment with anxiety and excitement. Other local communities doubted that it was going to happen! But it did! At 5:45 p.m. when the sun finally sets behind the mountains, the whole town awaited the great occurrence: The Costarrican Institute of Electricity (ICE) finally turned on the switch and voilá “there was light”. The whole soccer field (or “futbol” as it is called in my home country) lit up and the crowd cheered with joy. The children ran through the field, as it was the first time that they had seen the field. In a way it was, isnt it funny how lighting makes everything look different?  It was a dream come true. But like every good thing in life, in order to make it happen, the people in Rancho Quemado, first dreamed about it and then worked hard to get it done.

When this community first approached the Corcovado Foundation’s FACOSA fund their enthusiasm was contagious and we believed in their dream also. As you know, the goal of the Osa Community Support Fund (FACOSA) is to provide small funding to local communities in order to help them improve their quality of life and answer some of their most basic needs such as clean water access and providing a minimum income for local families.

The Sport Association of Rancho Quemado received $3000 USD from FACOSA and then raised $9,000 USD more from different sources. They dreamed of lighting up their football field in order to have a healthy entertainment for young people and a way of fundraising by selling food during sporting events. It was an ingenious way to provide more income for local families, promote sports and also discouraging young people from getting into trouble (men in these communities often engage in illegal hunting after work as a pastime).

In the words of some of the local leaders in Rancho Quemado:

Oscar Urena, Chairman ofthe Sports Committee said: “This is asmall town, butvery organized.People arevery motivated, and there are sevenor eight associations in town. Along with the ICE, the municipality, the Corcovado Foundation, the local Development Association, we have managedto installthe light for this field.  It is the only illuminatedcourt in the Osa Peninsula.

The football teams  couldn’t come  during the day since they were working, but they can come in the evening to play football. It has created more opportunity to participate in sports.It is especially good for young people because they see that elders are helping them by providing these facilities,and thus improves the relationship between youth and adults.It offers something nice and positive to do in the evenings, instead of nothing to do.Youth groups are more proud of their town and more aware of the environment, andare contributing to the issue of conservation, by recycling and have placed garbage collection sites throughout the community.  

Many people come here and are astonished,they cannot believe what we have achieved. We told them that this is because the community is very united and work together to improve the lives of all.

Mr Fredd yRodriguez, Member of the Sports Committee of Rancho Quemado stated that “We were able to take advantage of illumination at night to organize more soccer events, in order to raise more money for the association and the community.We are not finished, we would like to add a mesh around the goal, with the money we hope to raise. Since it is new, we have not yet calculated how much we will need for utilities,but it looks that we can generate enough income from the night activities.

We give a heartfelt thanks to theCorcovado Foundation and other organizations for helping make this dream come true.

Maria Eugenia Siles, Member of the Association of Women, said “we like to cooperate with the football activities, our association prepares the food that is sold at the events.The events benefit everyone and the community gets more involved in sports.There are more activities for young people and the town is more united.It is very positive and it looks very nice”.

This town is more united by its success and enjoys more of the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, they are generating more income to improve other services and they feel confident in their accomplishments. All of this, thanks to your generous donation.  Keep donations coming, no matter how small, this will make other communities dreams come true.