2020 was a strange year. What started for us lowlanders in January as a far-from-your-bed show on page 3 in the newspaper, became front page news in February and kept us locked up in the house, in quarantine from March. Also here in Costa Rica everything was locked in March. Where we in the Netherlands and Belgium, in the event of adversity, being cushioned by a social safety net is more or less non-existent here.
Playas del Coco is a small village on the west coast of Costa Rica, not far from the border with Nicaragua. The local micro-economy is completely dependent on tourism. When the borders were closed in March, a large majority of the locals were put on hold. Usually only here there is only 1 bread winner per family, so soon many families were on black seed.
To give back to a community we've been a part of for 15 years, we decided to create a nonprofit to donate food to local families. Colors across Costa Rica is run from our shop and donates food packages to 200 families every Thursday. To prevent abuse, each family must register and someone in the family does a useful task for the community. This can range from collecting waste on the beach to pruning plants along the street.
Many expats enter our shop with food to hand out or donate money. Donations also come in from afar through our gofundme page. To collect extra money, we organized book sales and 'sold' telephone poles, which the owner could then paint. In this way, not only was money collected, but Playas del Coco also received a number of beautiful works of art.
