General Impression
Overall Rating: / 10
I just finished my time volunteering with LV in Costa Rica and wanted to share my experience, as I mostly only could find reviews for African or Asian countries on the internet before my trip.I was in Jaco Beach and joined the Educational Support programme by LV. Unfortunately I would absolutely not recommend this programme. I was supposed to stay for 6 weeks but left after just 1.5 weeks.
I think that because Love Volunteers is such a huge organisation who have programmes all over the world, they don’t really know what’s going on at every project location. I already had so many struggles arriving before even volunteering.
The circumstances of the project don’t allow volunteers to actually help and make a difference.
The programme description on the website was very different and while you expected to actually make a difference here and feel like you could make an impact in the children's life, you were just disappointed. I was supposed to go into schools and help the children learn English.
Firstly, we were at a public school, where they desperately needed our help with English but unfortunately the school was super unstructured (which is of course normal that the circumstances are not the best) and the English teacher was barely there (the English teacher had personal issues and was barely coming to school to teach). The children were just missing out in their opportunity to learn English. We weren’t allowed to teach a class ourselves, so we were just assigned random cleaning tasks around the school. Because we were upset about not giving the chance to help the children (while also only being in school for an hour daily) they managed to assign us to a different school.
The new school: A private bilingual school, teachers from the US, students fluent in English…no help needed.
Now that sadly wasn’t the intention of the programme at all anymore. Those kids at the public school needed the help but sadly the school and programme managers couldn’t make it accessible to them.
This of course is just a single experience, but I think that the situation at the school has been like that for a while. Which LV should’ve known about and in my opinion shouldn’t have offered this programme anymore.
Also, which for me is also a part of volunteering, that I expected was to be in a community of other volunteers who are helping out as well. If you’re looking for a fun experience with other volunteers who share the same passion for helping as you, then definitely don’t join this programme.
When I arrived there was one more guy here, who before me was alone for a few weeks. If you’re planning to stay long term than you should maybe consider that.
If I had know about it before, I would’ve thought twice about it. Of course this is also only because I’m a young student taking a gap year and wanna have fun experiences while volunteering.
Overall, I think that other locations might be a better option if you really wanna make a difference and volunteer.
[From LV: thanks so much for providing this feedback. It is a challenge to organise resource poor public schools in Costa Rica and there is always the catch 22 that they need the help but aren't organised enough to receive it. We don't construct that volunteers will be together in one place at one time but allow flexibility. This does mean that volunteers aren't always with others.]
Country
Costa Rica is an amazing country, I would recommend everyone to visit it once. The country is beautiful and has a lot to offer, various different national parks with amazing nature, wildlife and stunning beaches.
The locals all are friendly and when you go to touristy places they do speak basic English.
But you still need to be careful, especially at night and as a girl.
Even during the day when I was walking around town by myself guys give you looks and try to talk to you all the time!!
But I sill felt safe mostly and Costa Rica is just such an incredible country.
The locals all are friendly and when you go to touristy places they do speak basic English.
But you still need to be careful, especially at night and as a girl.
Even during the day when I was walking around town by myself guys give you looks and try to talk to you all the time!!
But I sill felt safe mostly and Costa Rica is just such an incredible country.
Project & Staff
But what I really appreciate is that LV tried to better my experience here and look for alternatives. They also reallyjust weren’t aware of the situation here and tried to adjust it.