
Hola from Costa Rica! I am writing from EARTH University where I am spending a week living as a student with a group sent by Whole Foods. EARTH is a tropical paradise with a mission: to prepare leaders with ethical values to contribute to the sustainable development of the tropics and to construct a prosperous and just society. They are reaching these ambitious goals in surprising and inspiring ways which I have been lucky enough to witness during my stay.

If EARTH University sounds familiar to you, you may have seen it on a banana label on the shelf of your neighborhood Whole Foods Market. In addition to bananas, Whole Foods supports the universities commercial enterprise by sourcing pineapples, tropical flowers, and coffee. (If you haven’t tried Costa Rican coffee, run, don’t walk to whole foods to buy some. It’s amazing!)

Profits support EARTH’s scholarship program, which is important because half of all students receive a full scholarship and an additional 30% receive a partial scholarship. The students come mostly from Latin American countries and don’t have the economic means to afford a college education. The goal is that the students return home after graduation and improve their communities with the knowledge they have gained at EARTH. It’s working because each EARTH grad creates roughly four jobs.

The curriculum is a combination of hands on learning and traditional classroom style. Each student starts and runs a business beginning in their second year, making them effective agricultural entrepreneurs. My condensed experience here has had me spending time in the banana fields, the packing plant, multiple gardens (most of the food in the cafeteria is grown on campus), and classrooms, including the soil lab, which was a crash course in the chemistry of what makes good soil.

More than just an institution of higher education, EARTH is deeply committed to the improvement of local communities. La Florita is the first carbon neutral community in Costa Rica, and possibly Latin America, because the university has committed to sharing its agricultural and environmental knowledge. Earlier today EARTH students and I helped install a bio-digester in a small farm which will help the environment by keeping pig waste from contaminating the local eco system, and also provide methane gas for the family to cook with, so they don’t have to cut down trees to use for firewood. Earth is innovating and implementing many more similar solutions that benefit the environment and communities.

Everyone here at EARTH has been exceptionally warm and welcoming. Not just the professors, staff, and students, but also the local sloth and iguana seem to say hola in their own way. The pura vida attitude is contagious. I am looking forward to my “graduation” even though it will be sad to leave this amazing place. When I return home I hope to improve my community by sharing the knowledge I have gained this week, just like a real EARTH graduate.
Photos by April Gilbert





