The Quepos hub works in line with the following Sustainable Development Goals; SDG 3- Good Health and Well Being, SDG 4- Quality Education, SDG 5- Gender Equality, SDG 8- Decent Work and Economic Growth and SDG 17- Partnership for the Goals.
In line with these goals we aim to promote and improve learning opportunities for local community members, particularly the women and children. We work collaboratively with local partners and community groups and members to facilitate learning and skill-building among children and adults and empower stakeholders to use increases in knowledge, skills and confidence gained to increase opportunities and advance livelihoods.
In 2019 we worked with 59 students of the Cocal community to supplement and broaden their education to:
- support local education work and offer a broadening and deepening of opportunities and support in literacy and numeracy
- increase English skills to facilitate increased access to income and on average higher income rates
- increase environmental awareness to help sustain the local natural resources upon which most local income is dependent;
- increase their awareness and focus upon health and well-being
Through our community English teaching program we offered conversational lessons for more than 40 teenagers to increase their skills to provide them with greater opportunities for employment, and our work contributed to an 10 % increase in grades for both literacy and numeracy. We also worked with 102 women and 156 men in further education opportunities and support.
Beyond the local community, we started to build our focus on environmental awareness and began to pilot an environmental education program partnered with local schools. We also conducted 14 workshops regarding waste management and recycling reaching 182 people and collaboratively planted 702 mangrove trees to aid reforestation, combat climate change, biodiversity loss, and help protect the village and area from coastal erosion
We worked on a community garden with the local community to promote healthy eating and sustainable food sources for the community and ran 7 community based workshops regarding healthy eating.