Costa Rica - Part 4

Today we traveled with some of the students at Earth University to one of the poorest communities in Costa Rica. It is a small community outside Liberia built almost entirely from materials sourced from a local dump. The people of the community are 80% Nicaraguan and have no legal entitlement to the land on which they live. Without any entitlement to the land there is little reason to improve living standards or housing and as a result there is limited access to potable water and electricity. The students of Earth are required to take a semester's class in "community engagement" where they go out into poor, rural communities to share their knowledge of agriculture and help establish community gardens. It is the goal of Earth University to keep students in touch with their surrounding communities while helping improve life within them. We set to work helping with any and everything from planting seeds to irrigating lettuce planters. At one point we helped to construct hanging tomato planters out of denim pant legs stuffed with shredded plastic bottles and manure (pictured right). Our morning's work in the community also gave us some exposure to the low-income building culture that exists in central america. It seems critical for us to understand this culture is we intend on creating low-cost building materials in the area, as some people have purposed. Having never been in such a poor community this was an eye opening experience, one which has raised other questions in my mind concerning social entrepreneurship and what positive impact I can have as a designer on such poor communities outside of this studio.