Pura Vida & Suave

     Yesterday was a boring day.  We had five guest speakers come talk to us.  the first man was an entrepreneur who talked to us about how the country has grown and the new opportunities that are available.  He said that there weren't a lot of opportunities when he was 20.  From 1978 to 1982, the economy in CR was very bad.  Around 1982, things started to look up.  The socialist party helped the economy to grow.  Now CR has the widest range of export products in the world.  CR had to learn how to compete and do business with the rest of the world.  CR had the first free trade agreement in the world.  CR really became a competitor with the rest of the world when Intel came into the country and built their plant.  Intel opened the door for many other companies to come to CR and build.  He also told us about  a company he created for his two sons that did not have inventory or account receivables.  they created Ticoshopping.com, an online store where you can buy coffee, food, sauces, drinks, jellies and jams, snacks and sweets, health, t-shirts, and souvenirs from CR.  It has been running for over 10 years, and they plan to sell it in the next 5 years. 
    The second guest speaker was Lisa.  She talked to us about the economic development in CR.  She told us about how a couple decades ago, the president at the time had proposed a presidential candidate for the next term but the CR people really wanted the other candidate who was running.  When elections began, someone cheated to make the not so popular person win president.  The CR people were very angry, and the revolution started.  It only took 3 months to overpower the existing army and government.  The new state was organized by intellectual people that would answer to the social needs of the people.  Water, energy production, education, health, communications, banking, and insurance began at this time for everyone in the country even if they couldn't afford it.  CR heavily relies on the US market.  In the 1960s, CR started developing industrial goods for the rest of Central America such as fertilizers, processed food products, and electrical appliances.  Exports tripled during the 90s.  CR has developed a foreign investment policy with great success by offering incentives.  CR promotes themselves a lot for foreign investment. 
     The third lady was Gail who is president of Costa Rican Humanitarian Foundation that works with underprivileged children.  In 1977 she came to costa rica through the peace corps.  There are still communities in costa rica that are poor.  They don’t have running water in their homes and some don’t have electricity.  A lot of the families in the poverty communities are single mothers.  The men will leave to go back to their country they came from or to another woman.  Money for poverty communities:  take a resource and figure out who needs it and where they need it.  She thinks that you can slowly get out of poverty from 1 ½ to 3 generations later.  The perception is that it’s a very bad and dangerous city.  It’s just like New Orleans where you just have to be smart about what you do and where you go.  La Carpio may one day become a condominium community.  It’s currently a really poor city but it’s slowly being turned around.  There are about 34,000 people in the city with basically 1 way in and 1 way out.  This foundation is very expensive to run.   Pay $2 week to buy snack and paper goods.  Rest is subsidized through donations and volunteers that come and work and try to help out financially. 
     The fourth person was Dr. Fernando, was a dean at the university of costa rica, chemist degree, also wrote a book.