Creative Fundraising Will Send Western Oregon University Turtle Protectors to Costa Rica

By Eric Howald, Willamette Live Online

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For ten days this summer, a group of Western Oregon University students will act as heroes to halfshells.

Provided, that is, they can raise the funds necessary to make the trip.

Six WOU students and two staff advisers are planning a trip to Costa Rica to assist La Tortuga Feliz, a non–profit organization dedicated to the protection of sea turtles. “We’ll be walking the beach to make sure the turtle eggs are safe from poachers,” Sam Goodwin, a sophomore and one of two project leaders, said. “I’m sort of hoping our presence is enough to deter them,” quipped Melissa Ineck, one of the staff members accompanying the trip.

Students and staff are planning the trip as part of the university’s Alternate Break program, which dispatches groups of volunteers around the country and the globe to participate in service learning projects. In Costa Rica, the group will “patrol” the beach in Tortuguero National Park and the harbor of Limón, the site to which the four largest species of marine turtles journey to lay their eggs. Past trips have included projects in Alaska, New Orleans, Peru and Vietnam.

To raise money needed to finance their travels, the group members have planned midnight movies, a dance, bottle and can collection drives, flower and water sales at graduation ceremonies, and offered babysitting, housework, and yard work services to faculty and staff. “We’re always looking for new ways to fund-raise. We’d even be open to local businesses letting us put out donation cans at their workplace,” Stacey Walen, a WOU freshman and coordinator for the Costa Rica trip, said.

The Costa Rica-bound students still need to raise about $10,000 to cover their travel and associated expenses, but the group won’t be lazing in the sun at five-star hotels. “It’s going to be pretty much like camping,” Ineck said. “We’ll have plumbing, but that’s about it. We’ll spend each night in the outdoors.”

Goodwin explained that the trip is something of a departure from past Alternative Break programs. “We’ve never planned a trip with a mission of conservation,” she said. “Up to this point, most of the trips have dealt with human needs.”

Goodwin traveled to San Diego as part of the Alternative Break program last year. She and other students spent the trip volunteering at the Storefront Emergency Shelter for homeless and runaway youth. She came back a changed person. “It definitely made me realize how fortunate I had been to come into contact with teens that had been so abused we couldn’t even touch them. It’s a whole other level of reality,” she said.

As part of their schedules, the students selected for Alternate Break trips have weekly meetings to learn about their intended destination. “We’ve had everything from cultural lessons to lessons about the turtles to Spanish lessons,” Walen said. “One of our trip members made a mock travel video to show during our meeting.”

Given recent economic hardships, the trip members understand that they are asking for a lot to make the trip a reality, but they’ve got a compelling reason driving them. “We’re asking the community to support us because they’ve raised us to want to help. To do something for the world. To do something right. What we’re asking for is the opportunity to do it,” Goodwin said.

For more information about the alternative break program or to make a donation, visit www.wou.edu/student/career/ASB.php. Local businesses willing to host a donation jar for the trip can contact Walen at swalen07@wou.edu.