A Heart to Heart with Costa Rica’s Abriendo Mentes

It is a hot & dry Wednesday in the Guanacaste province of Costa Rica when I show up at the small office of Abriendo Mentes to meet with Country Director, Rachael Sine. As a Kind Charity Partner, we have spoken via email and over the phone, but now we finally get to meet in person.  

Abriendo Mentes is a Costa Rican non-profit empowering individuals from local rural/underserved communities to develop the skills they need to seize educational and economic opportunities for themselves and their families.

By teaching computer skills and providing English classes to both youth & adults, Abriendo Mentes enables its community to become economically stable through steady job placement. Their programs are thoughtfully developed to address the unique education and community development needs of the villages where they are specifically located. 

The office is crowded with a recent donation of children’s clothes and the only space to be found in the room is at the single desk with three chairs surrounding it. I go to sit down & Rachael quickly says, "be careful, that chair is a little broken, but it still works." Smiling, I respond, "No worries" and ask about the stairs I see leading up to an open floor above. Rachael shares that the room upstairs is another small space that they sometimes use for classes but as the air conditioning doesn’t reach up there, they only tend to use it when they need extra space. "You can only sweat for so long," she says laughing. 

Joining in with her laughter, I launch into my first question, truly interested in how Rachael (previously living in Philadelphia) first ended up with Abriendo Mentes over five years ago.