The Encanto Project coalition includes Connections Institute Eco-Cultural Expeditions, Costa Rica Conservation Trust, and Incredible Places™ Made For the Media Education Programming, and World Trust Foundation's Youth Ambassador Program. The Encanto Project vision is to capture interest, educates and inspires action to make change.

If you know of a youth who would grow from this Incredible Places program, donate here.

Encanto means enchantment and our focus is to create educational media and experiences that support and inspire onsite conservation work, youth programs, and sustainable practices in remote rainforest regions of Costa Rica, as well as awareness internationally of the successes and needs of these practices. The Encanto Project serves numerous organizations and individuals whose efforts preserve rainforest, effect change by creating sustainable practices in adjacent communities, educate, reach mass audiences through promotion, and develop economy through preservation of these rainforest areas rather than devastating alternatives such as ranching.

This is done in conjunction with community stewardship of these areas through renewable resource development, guides, educators, project managers and leaders, as well as sustainable ecotourism. CRCT and their involvement in the Connections program bring youth and volunteers to Costa Rica. They engage in local preservation and restoration projects whose long lasting effects on the local community not only support the community but also empower them to educate others. Our hope, as part of this grant request, is to bring five inner city youth from the U.S. to Costa Rica for cultural exchange with the remote communities CRCT works with.   Their experience would include outdoor education and leadership skills training in conjunction with the World Trust Youth Ambassador Program. Incredible Places with World Trust will provide media mentoring and documentation as part of the Encanto Project, including documentation of scientists preserving the Tapir and Jaguar, two important endangered species.

World Trust Foundation is committed to bridging cultures and uniting youth through media, art and technology.

Connections Eco-Cultural Expeditions - Costa Rica Through cultural immersion, project-based, exploratory, experiential, and multi-intelligence eco-adventure, participants engage in mind-expanding activities that help build connections with the natural world and other cultures.   Highlights include home-stays with a Costa Rican farming family, helping recover endangered species, discovering the rainforest, swimming under waterfalls, artistic expression, global awareness workshops, and much more!   One week and two week trips to Costa Rica are made year round.   Activities vary depending on season of travel. 

Caution:   Common Side Effects include:   becoming inspired to be part of the change you wish to see in the world and a heightened sense of interconnectedness with the environment and people in other countries.  

Incredible Places has been documenting biodiversity and environmental restoration within Costa Rica and features the work of Costa Rica Conservation Trust as they support the tiny communities and environments within the region identified as The Path of The Tapir, as well as notable leaders in sustainable living and conservation. We are using our footage to create educational media, curriculum, documentary, magazine articles and exhibits and installations that will eventually populate an educational center see plans.

Current Programs, Activities and Accomplishments

Encanto Project

Over the past several years we have developed the structure and relationships for our ongoing programs. We have completed most of Phase 1, which also included starting educational media production, document organization efforts, translation of existing interviews. Post existing footage and create initial segment on CRCT to demonstrate work being done in Costa Rica by this group.

World Trust Foundation

As part of the Youth Ambassadors program WTF has successfully raised funds to bring youth to Geneva for United Nations conferences, participated in numerous international education efforts. WTF has also raised funds and is currently building housing in Sri Lanka for Tsunami victims.

CRCT with Connections

CRCT and the Connections Program have been perfect examples of spinning straw into gold. These are the reasons why we feel these partners are so important to The Encanto Project

CRCT and Connections work parties benefit communities as much as the folks who volunteer and the youth who have participated.

Programs over the past year have:

•  Helped the youth of Savegre paint ecological murals and inspiring quotes all over their high school
•  Helped build a community recycling center

 

•  Helped create sustainable community pig composting program to save local water sources from pollution
•  Provided important mentorship and training sessions to take place with youth that are leading sustainable development projects in their villages 
•  Helped create new income for host families, guides and other local men and women

 

•  Helped create new conservation-based jobs for rural youth who would have otherwise been forced to log, ranch, hunt for money or migrate to urban centers (including the U.S.) to find work. 

 

Activities for youth have included:
•  Exploring one of the most biodiverse jungles in the world
•  Interacting with the local people in a meaningful way

Past groups have visited and positively affected the following communities and areas:

•  Mirador de los Quetzales Mt. Lodge (top of Cerro de La Muerte - Central area of Costa Rica),
•  San Isidro de El General (urban center in the Central Pacific - pit stop),
•  Savegre de Río Nuevo (rural mountain community in the Central Pacific - host community),
•  Finca 3 Semillas and La Danta Arboretum (located in the mountains of the División Valley in the Central Pacific).
•  Piedras Blancas (very rural mountain village in the Central Pacific - site of rainforest caves),
•  La Danta Arboretum and Finca 3 Semillas (located in the mountains of the División Valley in the Central Pacific).
•  Hacienda Barú National Wildlife Refuge (on the beach in the Central Pacific).

 

Partners Connections and CRCT have worked with in the past year:

•  Hacienda Barú National Wildlife Refuge and surrounding area www.haciendabaru.com
•  Cerro de la Muerte cloud forest
•  Instituto ASIS Wildlife Rescue Center and surrounding area   www.institutoasis.com
•  Los Santos Forest Reserve in the Central Pacific region of Costa Rica. 

Youth Testimonials about Connections and CRCT:

"This has been a life changing trip to say the least. I feel so much more confident in trying new things - the food, meeting new people, jumping into rivers & speaking Spanish with locals."
- 16 year-old Connections participant

"This experience was amazing and has definitely changed me forever!"
- 17 year-old\ Connections participant

"The experience was incredible and life changing"
•  16 year-old Connections participant

Encanto Overall plans for the coming year

•  To engage youth in eco cultural programs currently underway with CRCT and Connections with tangible effects on the environment and the local community
•  Develop educational media piece for CRCT, WTF and Costa Rica groups collaborating with them.

Future

Encanto Education Center and Land Trust with local stewardship to preserve rapidly diminishing rainforest while securing a sustainable future for generations to come. Includes an education center with media programming for the public, made available to scientists, conservation groups and educators around the world. Our target location is in the Osa Peninsula, adjacent to the largest remaining rainforest in Central America.

Structure

The project has been driven and fueled by personal passion turning straw into gold. We have been bootstrapping the project using all available resources to help sustain us. Most of the project has been and will be provided in-kind and through volunteer effort allowing the grant money to effect the largest population.

Program Director:

Amy Seidman has been an environmental activist along side being a widely published photographer and pioneer multimedia artist. Early accomplishments include developing a pioneer environmental education program for Culver City, CA. This program involved Culver City students in the development of this multimedia environmental education program supported by Sony Resource Center, CCUSD, Santa Monica Bay Restoration Foundation, Audubon Society and Heal The Bay. The program was so unique and pivotal to the community that it was covered by and aired on NBC National News and was funded by Santa Monica Bay Restoration Foundation and The City of Culver City.

Prior to this, Amy acted as Associate Producer and Co-Writer of Earth Day Documentary IN RESPONSE TO THAT and the accompanying Public Awareness Campaign. The coverage included Concerts For the Environment, Earth Day 1992, 1993, 1994 and the Great LA Clean Up. She developed a series of multimedia public exhibits and was pivotal in gaining support. Concurrently, she assisted in obtaining grant from the Environmental Protection Agency for a PSA "GET THE LEAD OUT".

Recently, she developed three installations for the Natural World Museum Anima Mundi Exhibition; Five Elements Green Screen, video design for Digital Garden with greenmuseum.org and the visual media for Bernie's Krause's Wild Habitat soundscape installation. Two of these exhibits were included in the UN World Environment Day, Art into Action exhibit at Fort Mason in June of 2005. Digital Garden with greenmuseum.org was included in the Oakland Museum installation at Oakland Airport. These exhibits include images and footage she created over the past 20 years working in environmental media.

Group Facilitator

Kimberly Newton-Klootwyk, CRCT Vice President - Bilingual and Bi-cultural Central/U.S. American Historian/Anthropologist who has been working with rural Costa Rican communities (particularly with the youth) to empower them and provide them with the tools necessary to help them convert to sustainable development.   Previous to co-founding CRCT, she was a language teacher for elementary, Jr. High, high school and college students.   She holds a teaching certificate from the state of Arizona and also served as English Language Learner's Director for an Arizona school district where she developed academic and social support programs for immigrant students.

Board Overseer

The World Trust Foundation's Board oversees the project with Program Founder Amy Seidman of Incredible Places.

"Encanto" and “The Encanto Project” is registered with the Writer's Guild of America,
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