Breaking Down Barriers In Costa Rica

By David Hinton

Costa Rica - beautiful beaches, a tropical climate, lush jungles and fascinating active volcanoes. There are wheelchair ramps on street corners and a law outlining the rights of people with disabilities. It sounds like the ideal place to live or visit. But the reality is a little different, as the Canadian Paraplegic Association (CPA) confirmed through operating the Costa Rica Project for People with Disabilities over the past 12 months.
Yes, the beaches, jungles and volcanoes are lovely, but for the most part they are inaccessible. Street corner ramps are only in the capital city, San Jose and are few and far between. The law was enacted in July 1996, but no level of government has fully implemented it and people with disabilities have been reluctant to come forward to force the issue.
However, Costa Rica has some advantages over other countries in the region. Military forces have been removed and funds have been channelled into education and health care. The President’s wife, Lorena Clare de Rodriguez, Costa Rica’s First Lady, has stepped forward to champion the cause of people with disabilities and established a foundation called the Fundacion Mundo de Oportunidades (World of Opportunities Foundation) to improve the life of Costa Ricans with disabilities. Her brother, who has had a disability from an early age, is a major reason for her involvement.

Our first contact with the Ticos (as Costa Ricans call themselves) was made at the 2nd International Conference on the Rights of People with Disabilities held in Havana, Cuba in October 1997. With funding provided by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), our first visit to Costa Rica took place in March, 1998. The purpose of this first phase was to develop a collaborative set of seminars to take place over the next twelve months. We presented a list of our areas of expertise and ask the Costa Ricans to match our list to their needs. CPA’s format for all international development projects is to have up to six visits to a country over approximately twelve months, delivering the training and education as agreed. This allows continual assessment.

Within a few months of the first meeting in Costa Rica our in-country contact had changed from the original Inter-Institutional Commission for People with Disabilities (a quasi government agency) to the President’s Assessor on Disability (the President’s appointment) and finally to the World of Opportunities Foundation. We also involved the Canadian Ambassador in all of our visits, which guaranteed some media coverage and solidified the linkages among the World of Opportunities Foundation, the First Lady, the Canadian Embassy, CPA and our project participants.

The seminars or training requested by the Ticos involved barrier-free design, wheelchair basketball, transportation, personal health care, peer counselling, wheelchair track and field, employment counselling and wheelchair construction and maintenance. Training, equipment and wheelchairs were donated to the foundation for distribution. Seminars were generally four-days long which allowed the Canadian instructors a few days to travel within the country to meet some more people and get a flavour for conditions in the outlying areas.
Throughout the six visits to Costa Rica we have offered training to over 250 Ticos who have taken this knowledge back into their communities to "spread the word". We estimate the trickle effect has reached thousands of people.

Wherever possible, we appointed Canadian instructors with disabilities. Men and women were actively recruited with the overriding mandate of professionalism and ability to deliver their training and knowledge. The simple translation required (English to Spanish) needed a great deal of time and patience on the part of the Canadian instructors, especially when it took several minutes to have one idea completely understood and grasped by all of the people attending.

In projects of this nature, all is not "honey and roses". There are continual changes and amendments, often made at the last minute. The final day of track and field training and the closing ceremonies required such flexibility. The training took place at the National Stadium where a soccer match between Costa Rica and Columbia was due to take place. Nobody had bothered to inform us. But what a chance to display our people and training to a captive audience! We continued as planned (of course completing before the soccer match actually began). The closing track and field ceremony had also been scheduled for the Stadium, later in the day, but was moved three times in one hour. When the time came for the First Lady and Minister of Sport to present the certificates to the participants, groups were waiting at all three sites. After about 45 minutes, everyone was assembled and we were finally able to proceed. It was well worth the wait. We received tremendous press coverage simply by having the First Lady in attendance.

The one area which raised the greatest interest for the First Lady and the Canadian Ambassador was the construction of wheelchairs which were built in Costa Rica, by and for Costa Ricans. We discovered that the cost of materials to manufacture a metal wheelchair frame is significantly less than in North America. The chairs are heavier than those used here, but for someone who has never had access to a chair, they are a godsend. With the intervention of the First Lady, government agencies, such as the Ministry of Social Services and Workers’ Compensation, will now be looking at these wheelchairs to fill some of their needs.

We recently completed the evaluation of the project. Has it been a success? According to our evaluator and the people interviewed, the answer is unequivocally "yes". Through the barrier free design seminars all architects and city planners now have standards with which to enforce the law. The Casa Presidencial (Offices of the President) will be remodelled to make them fully accessible, following an accessibility review this year. The foundation took an active role in this year’s Terry Fox Run (with which they were not familiar prior to our project) and were at the finish line with the Canadian Ambassador to greet the participants. The foundation is undertaking its own awareness walk entitled Frontier to Frontier (Nicaragua to Panama). Two Costa Ricans will be attending the Neurotrauma Symposium in September.

As reported by Gina Garcia, Legal Advisor to the Casa Presidencial, "Having leaders using wheelchairs was very important. It changed people’s minds. Here in Costa Rica we are used to seeing the disabled as poor and on welfare, and seeing such wonderful role models of professionals using wheelchairs created a great change in attitude. That might have been your greatest contribution."
And from the First Lady, "With the formation of the foundation, your Costa Rica Project was the first help that came from abroad. The project came along at just the right time and we received help in many areas."

With this training and education, those beaches, volcanoes and jungles may become more accessible, there may be ramps throughout the entire country and a law that is usable and benefits all people with disabilities. Ms. Katy Tanzi, President of the Fundacion Mundo de Oportunidades covers it all when she says, "The Canadians came and willingly shared their knowledge with us, and taught us to walk. The information you shared is now in our hands, and we must learn to fly with it."

Detailed reports, with photographs, on each phase of the Costa Rica project can be viewed by accessing the Canadian Paraplegic Association home page (http://www.canparaplegic.org) and looking in the Recent News section.

(David Hinton is Manager of International Development for the Canadian Paraplegic Association.)