Volunteer Abroad Blog

Andrew Manos, our most recent volunteer in Ghana chats about his experience.

It was a great month working with a local football team and local college sporting teams such as track and field, basketball, badminton, table tennis and volleyball. Since the West African Poly games are coming up, I was very busy volunteering with various teams.

Click here to read Andrew’s Full Story

Last weekend I went on a trip to Monteverde. It was about a 3-hour bus trip from San Ramon. We stayed at a hostel called Monteverde Backpackers. The gentleman who works at that hostel could not have been more accommodating. When we first arrived, we told him that we were going to a restaurant in town. He asked which restaurant and when we told him, he told us how expensive that specific place was. He then told us about a great little buffet-style restaurant close to the hostel. We thanked him for telling us about it, and went to check it out. The food ended up being incredible and we ate like kings (and queens) for about four dollars each.

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We woke up really early on Monday to get ready to do some construction work. We headed to the construction site at Cataratas, a beautiful small rural town in the San Ramón valley by bus. Rebecca, Emma, Diane, Meaw and I got off the bus and started the walk to get to the construction site. The construction taking place is for a family of three, a couple and a 4 year old boy who enjoys visiting his grandpa who is helping to build his daughter’s house.
The construction project is part of an agreement between uVolunteer and The Foundation for Rural Housing Costa Rica – Canada. Its main objective is to support development, through financing and management of construction, in rural areas of Costa Rica in order to reduce migration to urban areas.

There are three workers at the construction site who work with the volunteers and teach them about construction labors. One of them, the youngest named Roy knows a little English and helps the volunteers to practice Spanish and the volunteers help him to learn more English. They have become friends during the process.
The day we visited the construction site with the volunteers we introduced Diane to the construction project and she was really happy to be helping a family to get their own home. The work began with three of us digging a hole for the septic tank that needed to be 9 feet deep. It was really muddy so we had a blast using the shovels and taking out the dirt with the wheelbarrow. The other volunteers were sifting the sand that we were going to use to plaster the walls.
While we worked a man showed up with a guitar and started singing some Spanish songs to us! We asked for some English songs which he attempted for a couple of minutes but soon left because it started to rain.
We took a break around noon and afterwards we helped the construction workers to plaster the walls. Obviously, they have much more experience than us doing this and they don´t spill a single drop of the mix. We, on the other hand, spilled the mix everywhere even into our own bags! Apparently it takes a lot of practice to do it properly, but after a while Rebecca was showing the necessary skills to become a master plasterer!
After the plaster experience we moved some construction bricks near to the septic hole. These bricks are going to be used in the construction of the septic tank. We finished our day a little bit tired, dirty and happy, it was really rewarding to know that all the hard work was about to change a family´s life for good.

Volunteering at the community education project at Bajo Tejares district in San Ramón is very rewarding.  The district is the poorest of the region and people struggle everyday to make enough money for a meal for the next day.

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Today I visited Simon Bolivar school at Bolivar in San Ramon with Suri, Andres and Meaw.  The day was beautiful and sunny and we took a long walk from the bus stop.

The school is small with nice bright colors and has great teachers. Everybody was willing to help out and collaborate with us and that was really welcoming.

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This past weekend Kate and Phoebe who are Volunteering Teaching English in Costa Rica , went on the weekend trip and love to share part of their experience in Costa Rica with us. Let’s see what they say about their adventurous weekend trip!

“We planned on climbing Mt Chiripo, the tallest mountain in Costa Rica. However, when we arrived in San Gerardo, where the base of the mountain is, we were unable to get hiking passes!

The weather was too rainy and the park rangers were really worried about mud slides. We stayed the night here at a family run hostel called El Descanso. The next day, we did a hike up a smaller mountain. We got to see the cloudbridge which was absolutely beautiful We hiked for about 4 hours and got see some waterfalls and monkeys. It was a real jungle hike!

Later on that day we decided to leave and headed over to tiny Playa Dominical. This is mainly a surfing beach so the waves were huge. It was very beautiful despite the rainy weather and we met a bunch of cool Costa Ricans. We stayed here for a bit and then moved on to Playa Jaco.

This was more of a beach town, with some nice shops and lots of restaurants. This town was infested with surfing tourists and everyone was so nice! Finally, we had to return back to San Ramon. The bus ride was about 2 hours to San Jose where caught a bus to San Ramon which only takes about an hour. All in all, it was an awesome trip! We lived out of a backpack containing only the clothing we planned to hike in!