Raphel Weber and Haley Whitley started the Escuela Camino Claro educational center to offer English language and computer classes, plus homeschool training to children and adults of Pavones, Costa Rica. The center is founded on the pillars of literacy, service and humanitarianism.

Cause and Effect

by Tina Potterf

Haley Whitley, ’06, and Raphel Weber, ’07, met their freshmen year at Bellarmine Residence Hall and became fast friends. A bond, first fused by common interests and living quarters has evolved and endured through their partnership in an educational center they founded and built on the pillars of literacy, service and humanitarianism.

Whitley and Weber are the women behind Escuela Camino Claro (ECC), a nonprofit community education center the pair opened in March 2008 in the rural community of Pavones, Costa Rica. Escuela Camino Claro offers English as a Second Language classes, computer and Internet instruction, and homeschool training courses for the residents of Pavones. Each month the center enrolls roughly 24 students, ages 4 to 50. In a year’s time ECC has become a fixture there, serving the needs of dozens of disadvantaged children and adults.

Both Whitley and Weber were moved to create the center because of their commitment to reach out to those less fortunate, a principle strengthened through their studies at Seattle University.

“Seattle University gave me the tools to become an empowered individual, capable of making real changes in the world and always believing in myself,” Whitley says. “As I was receiving my undergrad education I was constantly given the inspiration to search for a deeper meaning in what life had to offer.”

During her junior year Whitley studied in Granada, Spain, at Centro de Lenguas Modernas, a branch of the University of Granada. The experience, she says, was revealing as it solidified her resolve to reach out to marginalized populations.

“I learned how to immerse myself in another culture, speak their language, see other parts of the world with a new perspective and start to really understand the importance of letting go of ethnocentric values,” she says. “This gave me the courage to find true meaning in my life by reaching out to other cultures and their communities.”

Doing service in another country was not a foreign construct for Weber, who participated in the university’s International Development Internship Program. In 2006 the program took her to Riobamba, Ecuador, where as an intern she tackled a microcredit project that aimed to involve local indigenous youth in community development and in turn improve their social and economic status.

“I had the opportunity to work alongside a culture in Ecuador that though it embodies a vital part of Ecuador’s history, is highly disregarded and marginalized,” she says. “I experienced nothing but warmth and openness from the Chimborazo people as they invited me to talk, eat and dance with them as though I was part of their family.”

Costa Rica was chosen for the educational center largely because of Whitley’s history with the region. In high school she took her first trip there and it deepened her understanding of the culture and people. When Whitley returned to Pavones six years later she planned to stay in Costa Rica for a few months but that turned into a year. While there she began tutoring locals and teaching homeschool and Spanish language classes to area children. After Weber graduated from SU she joined Whitley and the two conceived of a plan to grow the scope of their work and put down roots.

“When we were together we realized the enormous potential for starting a school and saw the great demand for a more substantial education,” Whitley says. “The locals have a strong desire for a high-quality English education and that wasn’t being offered.”

As nonresidents of the country and without teaching degrees, Weber and Whitley contemplated how to best fulfill the needs of the community. They considered starting an accredited institution but found the process arduous and fraught with challenges.

Instead, they went the nonprofit route, which afforded them the freedom to serve more community members in more ways. Back home in Oregon, Whitley had a friend who recently formed a nonprofit, Humans for Humanity, which was created to assist low-income communities. Partnering with the nonprofit, which Whitley and Weber did in January 2008, enabled them to get the center off the ground in quick order and legitimize their work.

“With a lot of hard work and motivation we created this community center,” Whitley says. While education is at the center of Escuela Camino Claro’s mission, its distinction is that the broad Pavones community benefits from the various programs it offers.

Through the Escuela Camino Claro center Haley Whitley (top) and Raphel Weber are providing invaluable educational instruction to children and adults in rural Pavones, Costa Rica.

Photo courtesy of Raphel Weber

“We have molded our mission to the needs of Pavones and though our focus is concentrated on the low-income population, we are able to provide services for the large range of socioeconomic backgrounds that make up this small community,” Weber says. “I feel incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to work with an amazing community and share such a special connection with the locals.”

With ECC, it’s not about insinuating their values and personal ideologies on the people of Pavones, Weber says. “Everything that we offer is at the request of the community. We are here to listen and support the community as long as they support us.”

Witnessing the benefits of their efforts to promote literacy and language in a community more than 3,000 miles from home is gratifying.

“The students, children and adults alike are learning, which is the single-most rewarding thing about being a teacher,” Whitley says. “I see the changes happen in front of me every day—several students are bilingual and literate in both Spanish and English now, even after only one year.”

A new pilot program the women have started is aimed at high school students in the United States and combines global outreach and cultural integration with service learning. The project launched this past June with eight students from Eugene, Ore., high schools.

For three weeks the group acclimated to the Pavones culture, met with community members, including families on the Guaymi (Ngabe) Indigenous Reservation and listened to their stories. The students were briefed on the history of the region through a segment called Life Stories, and teamed up with native students to explore and map Pavones and clean up an area beach.

“For most of the students it was an experience that changed their lives forever,” Whitley says. “We were able to enrich the lives of eight students, create income for the Guaymi population in the indigenous reservation and overall improve the relationship between foreigners and local residents.”

Whitley hopes to continue the program and broaden it to include a strong environmental component—plans are in the works to open a sustainable recycling center to serve surrounding areas of Pavones.

Currently, ECC is funded by private donations—the duo hosts an annual fundraiser in Eugene, Ore.—that cover operational costs. But as they ramp up their services and create new opportunities they hope to line up grant funding.

For now Whitley and Weber are celebrating the rewards of their labor.

“Seeing the people in Pavones catch on and begin to accept and respect us has been rewarding,” Whitley says. “Raphel and I both knew it would take a lot of work and persistence to gain the trust of the students and parents, but now people take us seriously because we have demonstrated fortitude.”