The month of March gave birth to new skate venues in two small communities of Guanacaste. Villarreal of Santa Cruz and Nosara of Nicoya high schools now offer their in house skateparks for their students.

First, Villareal High School built the first skatepark for a public high school in Central America.

Shortly after Santa Cruz, Treehouse Gardens from Playa Guiones donated a mini half pipe to Boca de Nosara High School for students to have their own skatepark. Spacialle Novak  from the Treehouse Garden said, “skateboarding is exploding in Costa Rica. Why not give them another reason to go to school.”

The seeds of having a skatepark for the high school in Santa Cruz were planted in 2010 by a group of students who identified the lack of safe recreational spaces in the area as one of the main reasons why young population is not as involved with the education system as they should be.

After the students proposed the idea of constructing a skatepark for the high school, they received support from Ministry of Education, education community, Youth Action Foundation (Fundación Acción Joven-FAJ) and the Culture, Education and Psychology for Infants and Adolescents (CEPIA).

The students who are involved in the project committed to improving their academic performance, changing their attitudes passing their courses and performing activities within their educational center.

In Nosara, when Enrique Campos and Spacialle Novak decided to discard the ramp at Treehouse Garden, they felt like high school would be a good spot to donate for giving it back to the community. Novak said, “the kids (in Nosara) are skating on a piece of pavement. We wanted to give them something more challenging.”

They also donated some money and a skateboard to auction off so that they can raise enough funds to fix the ramp before it is being used.

In addition to the skate park, Boca de Nosara High School is getting ready to build a new gym and giving extra attention to physical education.