A CAPSTONE SO NICE IT NEEDED 2 COMMUNITY PARTNERS: ASEPALECO AND ILA PROJECT
ASEPALECO - KAREN MOGensen Reserve |
A senior capstone project through PSU to engage to the Portland community in education about sustain ability and rainforest ecology.
|
My capstone project spans work with three organisations, and almost an entire year of work in the field to help create an outreach programme to educate young students about biodiversity, ecology, biology, and preservation. Over the summer I was lucky enough to work for two months at the Karen Mogensen Reserve run by ASEPALECO in Costa Rica. The reserve is located in the cloud rainforest of the Nicoya Peninsula and has amazingly varied and tight ecosystems across low and high elevations which I was able to study for a biological research survey.
Once I returned to Portland I wanted to work on a capstone programme that would allow me to apply my knowledge to serve the local community. I am now doing education outreach at the International Leadership Academy and other Portland schools. As well as trying to establish a permanent exchange programme to the reserve through PSU. |
|
Who I worked with
The long and short of my capstone inspiration
There were about a million independent factors that came together to draw me to the work I did this summer and plan to do over the course of this term. My parents are both biologists and throughout my life I have been in the field with them, during whatever research my dad was conducting or class he was teaching. And across my experiences in the French and American school systems I have always been lucky enough to find myself in classrooms where teachers were very passionate about tying current issues into our studies, so I’ve found a passion for current political, economic, and climate issues. I’m what you might expect of a political science and international studies double major, I care a lot about policy but I also want to help people in a way that actually creates a lasting change. In addition to this I’m trilingual (Spanish, English, and French) so I’ve always wanted to find a way to help people using this multilingual skill I have. I still struggled to connect all these areas of interest into one single pursuit that would be rewarding for me in the long run, or even just long enough that I could safely change to another career that I would stumble upon and realise I liked more. I think the biggest fear millennials face is always holding out for something better, it makes it hard to settle on anything: majors, jobs, residence, friends.
There were two big pushes that helped me find this project. The first was that last year I decided for certain that I wanted to pursue a masters degree in wildlife and fisheries or forestry, and that a result of that I would need some sort of relevant undergraduate experience and impressive GRE scores to get me into a field that is almost wholly disconnected from my undergrad. The second was that I had spent my entire fourth year at university absolutely losing the battle with my mental illness. With my bipolar disorder symptoms worsening I found myself either too depressed to attend class, to anxious to even start coursework, or maniacally focused on projects I felt I absolutely had to do first. Fall term I dropped all my classes, winter and spring terms I managed to just pass most of them. It was not a good year for me academically, socially, physically, emotionally... One of the things that had helped managed symptoms was going out and hiking with another friend of mine who was experiencing similar struggles. So I knew whatever internships or jobs I worked that summer I needed to be out in nature, and ideally this would lead to a career in nature where I would be contributing to something.
I applied to a teaching position and a small university in Colombia because it would pay me well and offered housing and I figured I could hike on my own time. But at the same time I asked my dad to inquire if anyone he had worked with new of any projects I could volunteer with that would allow me to be out in parks. I specifically wanted experience in parks because it would help when I applied to masters programmes. I also wanted to be in a park because my dream is to be a park ranger, and I knew it was highly competitive so I wanted to edge of having some indisputably relevant experience. As it would happen Luis Mena, my dad’s college roommate, is now one of the heads of ASEPALECO, an organisation that runs wildlife reserves in Costa Rica. Luis told my dad I could come whenever, help however, and leave whenever. So I scrambled to work extra hours, I talked to family for donations and loans, and I eventually got enough money to take a plane down to San Jose, and from there go on an 8 hour bus and ferry journey until I reached Luis’s hometown. I spent my first night in his home and from there I was dropped off at the park. I spent two months there doing every kind of job available. I learned about how the main offices ran, how trail maintenance was done, I helped cook meals, I help take atmospheric data, I cleaned cabins, I learned the trails extensively. And none of that would have felt even half as rewarding if I had not also had an amazing group of people from the local community who took the time to welcome me and teach me.
I worked in the Karen Mogensen Reserve, during my time there I stayed in a research station and in two cabins, all in the reserve proper. All of the workers either came from the closest town or from a town on the peninsula. The closest town was Jicaral, one of the bigger cities on the Nicoya peninsula. Everyone in the community new about the reserve and loved it. They loved it for immediately tangible reasons, such as fun class trips and weekend family vacations, jobs provided by tourism. But they also loved it because they all understood the importance of nature in their community. Potable water scarcity is a reality for many communities on the peninsula, but the towns around the reserve had plenty of clean water. The deer can be hunted by people in the community as well. The abundance of prey animals in the reserve keeps predators away from local farms and ranches.
There I met the groundskeeper, Arnulfo, and his wife, Meri, who worked as a cook when large groups came to stay. I also met three construction workers who were refurbishing the cabins, and another local guide who was much older and due to his arthritis, did not work in the reserve as much. The people in the community were incredibly knowledgeable about the local plants and animals, about what a healthy ecosystem looked like and how to maintain it. I was briefly ill due to a bad reaction to mites, for one week of my stay I lived with Arnulfo and Meri on their ranch in San Miguel Del Rio Blanco. There I learned how welcoming the people could be and how they had all been personally involved with the reserve in one way or another. It felt different from the many conservation projects I had seen before, because everyone had been included at every step of the process. I was informed that even the small plot of land that comprised the original boundaries of the reserve were part of the community. The land had originally be a farm, but the owners sold their land when none of their children wanted it, the woman who bought the land started reforesting and recovering as much as she could, but she still let the farmers live there until they died.
With this project I hope to give back to the community even if it only a tenth of what they gave me. I wanted to ascertain exactly what ASEPALECO needed, what Reserva Karen Mogensen needed, and what the neighbouring community needed. As I was talking to community members I came up with many needs. There is no date or wifi available in the reserve or nearby towns, this is leading the younger generation to leave for bigger cities, and in turn leaving less people to work the reserve and less people to work in the communities that support and are supported by the reserve. That felt ambitious and like a project for the future. Another need was for educational videos, very little has been down to help the reserve modernise how it interacts with tourists and students. While I was there I collected trail cam videos, as well as my own HD videos of the animals in the park. So I could easily spend five to ten hours putting together videos to help students and guests learn more about the reserve. But the reserve also had a great need for money. So I wanted to incorporate my personal biological research, the videos I collected, and the reserve’s monetary need into one project or series of projects I could do. One of the easiest ways for the reserve to make money is its volunteer abroad programme. Students who want to volunteer in the park and practice Spanish pay a fee that covers their lodgings, food, and a small amount of the overhead cost for the reserve. So if I could speak to Portland State and other universities about setting up a permanent rotation of study abroad programmes, the park could make more money and afford some of the expansion and reforestation projects they had discussed with me.
I also wanted to look more long term. My interest in nature began when I was in elementary school, I wouldn’t have been in the reserve for two months if my teachers hadn’t taught me to recycle and preserve water in kindergarten. I’ve always had an interest in teaching and outreach with children. So I wanted to take what I had learned about the could rainforests in Costa Rica and translate them into a fun educational experience that children could have, that would hopefully leave a lasting impact on how they viewed nature and their interactions with nature. And this project genuinely excites and inspires me because it somehow manages to include all these things I love, it is creating a positive education impact, it is political, and it involves nature. In addition to this I will primarily be presenting and international schools where I will be presenting English, French, and Spanish. So I have this opportunity to incorporate so much of myself into my work. As I move forward I’m most excited for a chance to look back, I will be reaching out to French teachers I know who are now teaching in the Portland area and asking if I can come present in their classes. I emailed Luis Mena again to make sure that all of the work I had thought of would be helpful to his organisation, and he was happy to see the results of anything I could achieve towards the goals I had presented.
“Walk Out Walk On” by Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze was an amazing book to read as I work on this project, not only for the new concepts it brought to my attention but for the fact that the authors were able to put into words concepts with which I was familiar but couldn’t properly articulate. From the moment I started this book I knew I would like it when the author’s stated “We’ll see that lasting change doesn’t start at the top of a system, but from deep inside it, when people step forward to solve a problem[.](p. 4)” This spoke to me because it is a general belief I hold about all kinds of change, community, national, international, social, economic, etc. But it was also one of the tenants around which ASEPALECO chose to operate, and the very much the way that Reserva Karen Mogenson was run. There are many projects that people in the community can work on to better their lives, immediately and in the long term. And one of the focuses of the book as summarised on page 220, was not to seek out and fix the biggest problem the community faced but rather to meet needs as they appeared and as it was possible, and then to appreciate the positive impacts that made. The part of the book that most positively influenced how I looked at creating change was on page 83, the passage is long but I want to include it here so I can refer back to it:
In Western culture, we’ve refined the practice of problem solving. We’ve learned to identify and label deficiency- here are the failing schools; these are the broken families; this is the abusive corporation. We’ve developed squadrons of professionals trained to break down problems into their component parts, and then to resolve, reform and eradicate them. These are well-intentioned social servants who are reengineering our schools to produce learning, our hospitals to produce wealth, our police to produce safety, our legal system to produce justice. We approach problems one by one and invest in specialised Institutions to deal with each of them.
Unfortunately, the proposed solutions that come from these institutions often have little to do with the people who live in the community[.]
Lasting change to me comes from people, it doesn’t come from the top down, it doesn’t come from the system that creates the problem to begin with, it comes from individuals and communities striving to do better. My goal with every project I work on is to facilitate the change that people feel they need. The reserve started as a bunch of farmland that had been ecologically decimated during the colonial period and the years following. Reforestation on the original farm wasn’t started until the 70s, but today the reserve is not only physically huge but plays an important role in the surrounding communities and in the country at large. A small project that brings attention to the work being done there can have a similar lasting effect.
There were two big pushes that helped me find this project. The first was that last year I decided for certain that I wanted to pursue a masters degree in wildlife and fisheries or forestry, and that a result of that I would need some sort of relevant undergraduate experience and impressive GRE scores to get me into a field that is almost wholly disconnected from my undergrad. The second was that I had spent my entire fourth year at university absolutely losing the battle with my mental illness. With my bipolar disorder symptoms worsening I found myself either too depressed to attend class, to anxious to even start coursework, or maniacally focused on projects I felt I absolutely had to do first. Fall term I dropped all my classes, winter and spring terms I managed to just pass most of them. It was not a good year for me academically, socially, physically, emotionally... One of the things that had helped managed symptoms was going out and hiking with another friend of mine who was experiencing similar struggles. So I knew whatever internships or jobs I worked that summer I needed to be out in nature, and ideally this would lead to a career in nature where I would be contributing to something.
I applied to a teaching position and a small university in Colombia because it would pay me well and offered housing and I figured I could hike on my own time. But at the same time I asked my dad to inquire if anyone he had worked with new of any projects I could volunteer with that would allow me to be out in parks. I specifically wanted experience in parks because it would help when I applied to masters programmes. I also wanted to be in a park because my dream is to be a park ranger, and I knew it was highly competitive so I wanted to edge of having some indisputably relevant experience. As it would happen Luis Mena, my dad’s college roommate, is now one of the heads of ASEPALECO, an organisation that runs wildlife reserves in Costa Rica. Luis told my dad I could come whenever, help however, and leave whenever. So I scrambled to work extra hours, I talked to family for donations and loans, and I eventually got enough money to take a plane down to San Jose, and from there go on an 8 hour bus and ferry journey until I reached Luis’s hometown. I spent my first night in his home and from there I was dropped off at the park. I spent two months there doing every kind of job available. I learned about how the main offices ran, how trail maintenance was done, I helped cook meals, I help take atmospheric data, I cleaned cabins, I learned the trails extensively. And none of that would have felt even half as rewarding if I had not also had an amazing group of people from the local community who took the time to welcome me and teach me.
I worked in the Karen Mogensen Reserve, during my time there I stayed in a research station and in two cabins, all in the reserve proper. All of the workers either came from the closest town or from a town on the peninsula. The closest town was Jicaral, one of the bigger cities on the Nicoya peninsula. Everyone in the community new about the reserve and loved it. They loved it for immediately tangible reasons, such as fun class trips and weekend family vacations, jobs provided by tourism. But they also loved it because they all understood the importance of nature in their community. Potable water scarcity is a reality for many communities on the peninsula, but the towns around the reserve had plenty of clean water. The deer can be hunted by people in the community as well. The abundance of prey animals in the reserve keeps predators away from local farms and ranches.
There I met the groundskeeper, Arnulfo, and his wife, Meri, who worked as a cook when large groups came to stay. I also met three construction workers who were refurbishing the cabins, and another local guide who was much older and due to his arthritis, did not work in the reserve as much. The people in the community were incredibly knowledgeable about the local plants and animals, about what a healthy ecosystem looked like and how to maintain it. I was briefly ill due to a bad reaction to mites, for one week of my stay I lived with Arnulfo and Meri on their ranch in San Miguel Del Rio Blanco. There I learned how welcoming the people could be and how they had all been personally involved with the reserve in one way or another. It felt different from the many conservation projects I had seen before, because everyone had been included at every step of the process. I was informed that even the small plot of land that comprised the original boundaries of the reserve were part of the community. The land had originally be a farm, but the owners sold their land when none of their children wanted it, the woman who bought the land started reforesting and recovering as much as she could, but she still let the farmers live there until they died.
With this project I hope to give back to the community even if it only a tenth of what they gave me. I wanted to ascertain exactly what ASEPALECO needed, what Reserva Karen Mogensen needed, and what the neighbouring community needed. As I was talking to community members I came up with many needs. There is no date or wifi available in the reserve or nearby towns, this is leading the younger generation to leave for bigger cities, and in turn leaving less people to work the reserve and less people to work in the communities that support and are supported by the reserve. That felt ambitious and like a project for the future. Another need was for educational videos, very little has been down to help the reserve modernise how it interacts with tourists and students. While I was there I collected trail cam videos, as well as my own HD videos of the animals in the park. So I could easily spend five to ten hours putting together videos to help students and guests learn more about the reserve. But the reserve also had a great need for money. So I wanted to incorporate my personal biological research, the videos I collected, and the reserve’s monetary need into one project or series of projects I could do. One of the easiest ways for the reserve to make money is its volunteer abroad programme. Students who want to volunteer in the park and practice Spanish pay a fee that covers their lodgings, food, and a small amount of the overhead cost for the reserve. So if I could speak to Portland State and other universities about setting up a permanent rotation of study abroad programmes, the park could make more money and afford some of the expansion and reforestation projects they had discussed with me.
I also wanted to look more long term. My interest in nature began when I was in elementary school, I wouldn’t have been in the reserve for two months if my teachers hadn’t taught me to recycle and preserve water in kindergarten. I’ve always had an interest in teaching and outreach with children. So I wanted to take what I had learned about the could rainforests in Costa Rica and translate them into a fun educational experience that children could have, that would hopefully leave a lasting impact on how they viewed nature and their interactions with nature. And this project genuinely excites and inspires me because it somehow manages to include all these things I love, it is creating a positive education impact, it is political, and it involves nature. In addition to this I will primarily be presenting and international schools where I will be presenting English, French, and Spanish. So I have this opportunity to incorporate so much of myself into my work. As I move forward I’m most excited for a chance to look back, I will be reaching out to French teachers I know who are now teaching in the Portland area and asking if I can come present in their classes. I emailed Luis Mena again to make sure that all of the work I had thought of would be helpful to his organisation, and he was happy to see the results of anything I could achieve towards the goals I had presented.
“Walk Out Walk On” by Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze was an amazing book to read as I work on this project, not only for the new concepts it brought to my attention but for the fact that the authors were able to put into words concepts with which I was familiar but couldn’t properly articulate. From the moment I started this book I knew I would like it when the author’s stated “We’ll see that lasting change doesn’t start at the top of a system, but from deep inside it, when people step forward to solve a problem[.](p. 4)” This spoke to me because it is a general belief I hold about all kinds of change, community, national, international, social, economic, etc. But it was also one of the tenants around which ASEPALECO chose to operate, and the very much the way that Reserva Karen Mogenson was run. There are many projects that people in the community can work on to better their lives, immediately and in the long term. And one of the focuses of the book as summarised on page 220, was not to seek out and fix the biggest problem the community faced but rather to meet needs as they appeared and as it was possible, and then to appreciate the positive impacts that made. The part of the book that most positively influenced how I looked at creating change was on page 83, the passage is long but I want to include it here so I can refer back to it:
In Western culture, we’ve refined the practice of problem solving. We’ve learned to identify and label deficiency- here are the failing schools; these are the broken families; this is the abusive corporation. We’ve developed squadrons of professionals trained to break down problems into their component parts, and then to resolve, reform and eradicate them. These are well-intentioned social servants who are reengineering our schools to produce learning, our hospitals to produce wealth, our police to produce safety, our legal system to produce justice. We approach problems one by one and invest in specialised Institutions to deal with each of them.
Unfortunately, the proposed solutions that come from these institutions often have little to do with the people who live in the community[.]
Lasting change to me comes from people, it doesn’t come from the top down, it doesn’t come from the system that creates the problem to begin with, it comes from individuals and communities striving to do better. My goal with every project I work on is to facilitate the change that people feel they need. The reserve started as a bunch of farmland that had been ecologically decimated during the colonial period and the years following. Reforestation on the original farm wasn’t started until the 70s, but today the reserve is not only physically huge but plays an important role in the surrounding communities and in the country at large. A small project that brings attention to the work being done there can have a similar lasting effect.
Want to learn more about ILA or ASepaleco? see below:
Here is a link to ASEPALECO's main website and the website for ILA if you would like to learn more about the organisations and how you can be involved!