Paola Arias

Feria Verdes

Monteverde Community Fund with María Vargas

During the summer, our team took the initiative to create a tri-fold brochure for use in future campaigns to attract international students. While the Institute has traditionally stuck to attracting via word of mouth, this method was greatly stunted by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Working with an organization on a social justice topic can be intimidating. We are just four people in the world trying to create some sort of impact on the world. The Institute provided us with ways to do so, while mutually benefiting them by creating content to display to international audiences. Change starts small, and in order for change to happen, it takes hard work and learning curves. Climate change is the biggest threat to our society today, and this small town in Costa Rica is providing an example of how to create a sustainable region to do everything they can to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change in a variety of different ways.

Throughout the project, we made use of the program Adobe Premiere Pro and Rush. They were the main video-editing softwares we relied on and resulted in steep learning curves that we were able to overcome. Our first explorations with these softwares were based on trial and error and due to skill differences, our video outputs vary in terms of timing, creative direction, and length, but ultimately work towards using video as a narrative storytelling tool to better understand how Monteverde’s residents have worked towards sustainable solutions in the face of climate change.

The MVI team worked significantly on team cohesion. Given our circumstances over the summer, it became difficult to stay on the same page. There was a point where it seemed as if team members were walking in very different directions. We had different ideas and understandings of how we were going to go about our project as we were in Costa Rica. As we navigated through stressful times we maintained respectful dialogue and would communicate to each other whenever we felt there was something we were not on the same page on.