CPR in Kenya, Costa Rica

by Alison Coelho and Jamie Kemsey
Global Service Corps

In 1993, Earth Island Institute Founder David Brower took out a full-page ad in the New York Times to announce the formation of a volunteer group of environmental activists that would travel the globe administering CPR - Conservation, Preservation and Restoration - to the Earth's beleaguered environment.

"In 1994," Brower recalls, "we combined our existing ideas and research with Rick Lathrop's Global Service Corps. I had high hopes that someday Rick and GSC would be ready to make the Global CPR Corps dream a reality. Now, after five years of hard work, that day has arrived!"

Continuing EII's growing tradition of supporting international environmental activities, Brower has committed $10,000 of his 1998 Sasakawa Environmental Prize to help launch the CPR program in Kenya. A second $10,000 is being used to establish a CPR program in Costa Rica. GSC's previous work in Costa Rica recently received a remarkable distinction. GSC is honored to announce that former Costa Rican President and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Oscar Arias has joined GSC's Board of Advisors.

Global Service Corps is a unique community-based program tailored to the talents of each individual. After spending 17 days to 6 months doing challenging work in foreign countries, participants return home with a richer understanding of the world's environment and people.

GSC's programs - in Costa Rica, Kenya and Thailand - are open to any US or foreign resident over the age of 20 who is interested in spending time doing good works for the Earth and its people.

CPR in Kenya
During 2000, GSC's Global CPR project will send at least 50 participants to work in Kenya where, for the past four years, GSC has been on the front line in the fight against HIV/AIDS - an epidemic that has left more than 22 million people in sub-Saharan Africa infected with HIV.

Every minute, 11 more people become infected with HIV; ten of those 11 will be residents of sub-Saharan Africa. Kenya has one of the highest infection rates in the world. GSC participants will help promote AIDS awareness with local community organizations and healthcare workers. GSC also is active in food security issues with a biointensive agriculture program that teaches organic farming techniques that help farmers and small landholders to produce more and healthier food on their modest plots of land.

GSC has helped create 2,000 biointensive agriculture plots in Western Kenya. Last summer, GSC brought this method of growing organic grains and vegetables to Kenya's semi-arid Eastern Province.

Jessica Goldberger, a 1993 GSC Kenya participant and Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, organized and led the first project near the rural village of Kibwezi. GSC participants helped Jessica demonstrate arid organic farming, pest control and composting techniques. The Kyumani Organic Farmers Self-Help Group and the Wikwatyo Wa Kikoo Women's Group are two organizations that benefited from these training sessions.

GSC built upon this initial work with another biointensive project in October, and is continuing to expand from Kibwezi, providing education and demonstrations to farmers and self-help groups in an extended range of communities.

CPR in Costa Rica
GSC Costa Rica has been working with local grassroots organizations to provide communities with environmental and social aid. GSC workers have cleared paths and undertaken trail maintenance on the approaches to the Dona Karen Mongensen Reserve - part of a planned 12,000-acre protected wildland in the tropical lowlands of the southern Nicoya Peninsula.

"We have worked at the reserve and at the offices in Jicaral, making environmental signs and slogans that are placed along the roadsides and at beaches throughout the Nicoya Peninsula," says GSC's In-Country Coordinator, Erica Nelson. "Andrea Pearson designed a map and brochure for the reserve area."

The reserve is owned and maintained by ASEPALECO, a Costa Rican eco-group that hopes to create a series of biological corridors to protect the region's howler monkeys, white-faced monkeys and bellbirds.

This past summer, GSC sent five adventurous travelers to launch the first Global CPR program in Costa Rica. The CPR brigade worked with several grassroots groups including Finca la Bella and the Monteverde Conservation League. Finca la Bella is a farming coop comprising 17 families that have banded together to prevent foreign investors from encroaching on their lands. At Finca la Bella, GSC workers planted trees and fashioned protective windbreaks along the outskirts of the region's fragile cloud forests.

Because there are many other forests and protected areas that receive little or no aid, GSC is exploring new projects with Costa Rica's Ministry of National Parks, local environmental groups and private reserve owners. GSC hopes to send around 50 participants to several new sites in the Talamanca Corridor this year.

Global CPR participants also traveled to Playa San Miguel on a mission to protect the coastal habitat of the endangered leatherback and olive ridley sea turtles.

CPR members patrolled beaches under the supervision of the US-based Sea Turtle Restoration Project (a former Earth Island project). The presence of the patrols helped discourage poachers from seizing the eggs. (Shrimp nets recently have become an even greater threat to sea turtles. During GSC's visit, Nelson reports, "Shrimp boats were constantly spotted too close to shore.")

"We walked the beach in shifts at night," Nelson recalls. "We saw olive ridleys laying eggs as well as the birth of the hatchlings." During the day, the GSC crew busied themselves building a new hatchery and participated in beach cleanups to make it easier for the turtles to nest.

"The Global CPR Corps needs your support, doing hands-on work that the Earth so desperately needs," Brower says. "As former UN Environment Program Director Noel Brown once said, 'It's healing time on Earth!' Won't you join us?"

For more information on schedules, fees and applications for Global CPR Corps expeditions, contact GSC, 300 Broadway, Suite 25, San Francisco, CA 94133, (415) 788-3666 or check our website at http://www.globalservicecorps.org