The Fountain Hills High School chapter of Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) recently wrapped up its yearlong community service project with a trip to Costa Rica, where they assisted a local school, put in some manual labor hours and had the opportunity to experience a different culture.

While many of their classmates spent their spring break poolside, FCCLA members had their “fun in the sun” walking across sky bridges, clearing trails and pitching in during English lessons.

This year’s big project was called “Sustain,” which focused on the many aspects of creating a lifestyle that uses less, saves more and treats the environment with a little more care.

“This project has completely ruined my ignorance about how I can live a more sustainable life,” said FCCLA advisor Claire McWilliams.

“It’s forced me to look at every water bottle that’s offered to me, every plastic bag I use at the grocery store and things like that.

“It’s forced me to think about the long-term impact of what I’m doing rather than just consuming.”

While FCCLA students spent the past school year working on personal projects tackling the topic of sustainability and spreading awareness throughout the community, the whole shebang was capped off by the recent trip to Costa Rica.

“We decided that sustainability was really cool and something we wanted to get into this year,” said Josh Vaught.

“Sustainability is strengthening something to the point of resiliency so that it can last over generations.”

Vaught explained that the idea of sustainability was not to simply create a bandage for a problem, but to address the problem in a way that it can take care of itself over time.

That was the philosophy the students took to Costa Rica, aiming to assist a village school in reaching its own sustainable state.

While in Costa Rica, students spent time helping out in the Sky Forest Preserve, taught English, painted, mucked out a pond, cut trails, dug trenches and the like.

Working on a school campus they simply referred to as “the colegio,” FCCLA members were teamed up with local students to improve the campus and enrich lives.

Along with a Water Bottle Challenge here locally, FCCLA funded two water bottle filling stations that were added to the colegio campus.

The rest of their work, however, involved getting more hands-on with the campus life and surrounding areas.

“The primary goal there was to go up to Monte Verde, the Cloud Forest region, and work with a technical high school there,” explained Emerson ONeill.

“We were rebuilding and reworking the forest trails that students use in their day-to-day lives. It pretty much consisted of shoveling gravel, putting it in a bag and carrying it up a mountain over and over again for a good four hours a day.”

“For every one of us, there was one of the locals helping out,” McWilliams continued.

“They were great educators and invited us onto their campus to work side by side with their students.”

The students admitted that the language barrier was a huge obstacle, but one they managed to work around and make lasting friendships.

“We didn’t speak much Spanish and most of them didn’t speak any English, so the language barrier was, I think, more difficult than we were expecting,” said Sierra Jarriel.

“But despite that, we still managed to work together, play sports, dance and all kinds of things. It was still really fun.”

Along with teaching sustainability, the FCCLA crowd did some learning of their own along the way.

“One day we went to a coffee farm and this guy, Guillermo, made this place extremely sustainable,” said Nick Lyons.

“He had this thing called a biodigester that took the methane his pigs produced and turned it into power for their kitchen.”

Now back home, rested up and able to reflect on the trip, Robbie Hugo said he and his fellow members of FCCLA brought back a lot of valuable memories and lessons.

“I think one of the most rewarding things was just meeting these people from a whole different culture and being able to work with them,” Hugo said.

“Even if you weren’t able to speak to them very well, there was still this connection you were able to make.

“On the last day, even though we had only been there five days, it was still hard to say goodbye. That was really special, and something I don’t think a lot of us expected to get out of this project.”

Photos courtesy of FHHS FCCLA