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crear association

Supplemental educational, recreational, career opportunities

Our Mission

The mission of La Asociación CREAR is to provide supplemental educational, recreational, and career opportunities for community members, primarily youth with limited resources, in the rural beach communities surrounding Playa Sámara in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, by offering a wide variety of innovative programs focusing on academic and artistic education, environmental consciousness, health, and socio-cultural development.

Our Vision

Our vision is a well-educated, socially conscious and enriched community with strong partnerships between families, schools, and community members.

Our Program

The CREAR Association, founded in 2005, is a non-profit organization in the rural beach communities in and around Playa Sámara in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. CREAR offers a wide variety of services to the local members of the community, primarily children, all completely free of charge. We seek to provide a venue where children and young people can develop their artistic talents through creative art-education initiatives, while simultaneously learning life-long skills that will offer them a wider and more fulfilling range of employment opportunities in the future. We aim to enforce an environmental and social consciousness in our students so that they may take that awareness back to their homes and continue to educate future generations.

Although good primary and secondary schools do exist, both private and public, children often attend school for only 3 to 4 hours per day and are frequently left without adequate supervision, as many parents must work full time to maintain their families. Our program utilizes this free time by providing not only fun activities, but an opportunity for personal, social, academic, and career growth. La Asociación CREAR thus provides the children with new learning opportunities that not only enhance their own educational and personal growth, but that of the town's future.

CREAR provides educational opportunities in the fields of technology, music, art, English, dance, theater, environmental education, horticulture, sports, values and academic support. Within each lesson/activity, there is always an academic foundation, as well as an English component, as we focus on promoting critical thinking and questioning. In addition, we run summer camps, women’s empowerment and independence workshops, and young adult apprentice programs. CREAR currently has a presence in the local schools 4 days a week in the form of an after school program, an initiative run with the support of Intercultura –Sámara Language and Cultural Center. We currently offer our program to 200 students from Sámara and the neighboring areas, including El Torito, Matapalo, Cangrejal, y Cantarrana.

CREAR also runs the first and only library in Sámara, with a wide range of books for children in both Spanish and English as well as books for adults in English, Spanish, French, German, Dutch, and Italian. The library is a free resource to all members of the community.

Goals

La Asociación CREAR is gaining a larger presence in the community every day. We will continue to provide our programs and services to the local members of the community at no charge. Our primary objective is to expand our resources in both funds and personnel so that we may implement future projects and expand our existing programs in size, effectiveness, and in materials.

Our goals for the future include

• Continue to provide after free school program with classes in the arts,
  languages, technology and the environment
• Offer summer day camps with fun and educational activities and excursions around
  the country
• Develop scholarship program to send children to educational away-camps
• Develop a community garden
• Offer CREAR Awards to the community
• Create the CREAR BiciTaxi – Rickshaw program
• Establish own office/building/space and recreational center for CREAR
• Obtain U.S. Non-profit Status 501(c)(3)
• Expand outreach to more schools in the area surrounding Sámara
• Increase participation in volunteer program
• Develop Adolescent Apprentice and educational programs
• Increase partnerships with other non-profits… Omprakash network
• Work with Zona Azul Foundation to increase programs
• Collaborate with Triskallian Volunteer group
• Host the CREAR Carnival
• Obtain grants to help fund program expansion
• Create a CREAR mobile classroom
• Large scale volunteer community improvement projects in surrounding communities

Surf Team

An initiative made possible through a partnership with Fields of Growth International, CREAR is proud to have formed a boy’s and girl’s surf team in Playa Samara. The team focuses not only on the sport of surfing, but also aims to instill core values such as responsibility, trust and confidence in its members through the formation of positive relationships with young men and women who can serve as mentors.