I am a young girl from Costa Rica, who has been interested in social and environmental welfare since childhood. When I started my university life, I decided to study Sociology and later Evaluation of Development programs and projects, I was interested in understanding human behavior and its relationship with the environment. There I worked with rural and indigenous communities that taught me a lot about the proper relationship between humans and nature. Then, I started my working life intermingling the social and environmental fields, focusing on international cooperation organizations but also the private sector. Working hand in hand with EY, IDB, Forever Costa Rica Association. This work made me understand the importance of knowing more about sustainability, environment, and project evaluation analysis standards.
Assertive communication: On one occasion there was a mistake made by a teammate regarding the wording of food requests to vulnerable families in an area of social and environmental vulnerability. This error in the documents was minimal and did not affect the content. For this reason, our direct management did not request the food for the month for these families. I requested a meeting with management to discuss what happened, indicating that I would help my colleague to review the following documents and request feedback from management, but at the same time, I requested that the families’ financial assistance not be postponed because this would affect their processes and progress. I did this in an assertive manner and following the protocol for good communication, and what I stated in dialogue was achieved.
I volunteered in Carara National Park, cleaning the park. We arrived in the morning hours when there were still no visitors to help people from the community who perform these activities voluntarily. The community explained to us the importance of protecting the environment and we cleaned all the accesses and roads of the park. While I was working and cleaning the area, I understood the importance of this National Park not only as a conservationist of the area’s nature, but also for the development of the community and how the people, being aware of its value, took such great care of the park.
Graduate: I have completed a graduate degree (e.g. I have a Masters degree or PhD)
I would lead inter-organizational educational projects to promote better environmental practices in rural agricultural sectors. I would do this because these sectors use chemicals that are harmful to nature because people are unaware of the benefits of nature in these processes. I would provide them with tools such as organic fertilizer and teach them how to make their production sustainable not only environmentally but also economically. Likewise, I would train them through workshops and participate in the importance of a healthy environment for better community and economic development. I would also request institutional articulation to provide other courses or inputs as well as provide long-term guidance for the community.
Inter-institutional communication: This is a challenge faced in almost all projects and would imply, for me, developing a strategy so that institutions can see the common benefit of improving a community and its relationship with the environment, as well as allowing them to see the positive benefit and impact that they can achieve from their institutions.
Community monitoring: Communities are very volatile and maintaining a course in a project is challenging due to various factors. I would train them so that they are aware of the multiple improvements that they would obtain by improving their relationship with the environment, the cost-benefit relationship in multidimensional terms and the importance of teamwork.
About 200 people
Yes
Latin American Network for Research and Development of Public Policies
Providing me with virtual and in-person spaces for the development of my training, giving me the opportunity to connect with people and organizations from other countries to create joint training based on experiences outside my country.
This is the wildcard section. As an evaluator, please provide a rating based on your overall impression and your sincere gut feeling about this application. No other justification is required.
