I spend a lot of time thinking about the big changes that need to happen in order for my daughter to inherit a Costa Rica and a world where women are treated better than they are today. Yesterday, I was reminded that sometimes, those changes get made through sheer individual achievement. Doors can be smashed open by, say, one woman who runs like hell.
How improbable is it for a Costa Rican athlete to become the fifth-fastest woman in world? As a friend pointed out after Andrea Carolina Vargas Mena broke her own records to secure her spot among the world’s best at the World Athletics Championships, not to mention becoming the first athlete from her country ever to qualify for an open-area athletics final, you have to take her context into account – and not just the tininess of her country, five million strong. It’s the lack of support, both official and societal, for female athletes. The lack of enthusiasm for any sport aside from soccer. I am reasonably interested in sports and very interested in women’s sports, and had never heard of her until this weekend. Many people here are still unaware, especially since she ran her final at the same time that Saprissa and Alajuela were facing off on the football pitch.
All of this is to say that when Andrea Vargas blazed her way down the track, she overcame not only the limits of her own legs and lungs but also layer upon layer of disinterest, of low expectations, of what have surely been many pulls and distractions and calls to give up and do something considered more sensible or appropriate. She showed us what it means to power through. Without any doubt, she gave new hope and surely attracted new resources to women athletes of all ages in Costa Rica – including women who are mothers, as she is.
Andrea won many hearts in just 12.64. She definitely won mine:
I’m a writer in San José, Costa Rica, on a year-long quest to share daily posts on inspiring people, places and ideas from my adopted home as a kind of tonic during a rough time in the world. Sign up (top right of this page) to receive a little dose of inspiration every weekday in your mailbox; tell a friend; check out past posts; and please connect with me on Instagram or Facebook! You can also find me churning out small, square poems on any topic under the sun (here on the site, on Instagram or Twitter).
It’s an extraordinary time to be a woman – and by that I mean heartbreaking, exhilarating, exhausting and energizing. Many whose experiences of abuse and oppression have long been ignored are finally starting to be heard. Those of us who are more fortunate, whose eyes have been opened by courageous revelations in many countries and the disgusting responses they often provoke, are sometimes left with a sense of impotence. Clearly, the empowerment and defense of women is an urgent task, but it can be easy to feel useless in the face of the deep-rooted hatred that is increasingly laid bare.
That’s why getting to know Ana Laura Araya and her program Soy Niña, a new organization near my home in Costa Rica, was not only inspiring but also provided me with a sense of relief. Here is a thing that is being done. Soy Niña works to empower women in a way that makes all the sense in the world: by starting when they are girls. Their flagship program, Club Niña, works with girls from Desamparados, just south of San José; it’s where Ana Laura grew up, but where problems and poverty have since multiplied. Club Niña surrounds those girls with weekly support focused on issues from self-esteem to nutrition to STEM skills. It connects them with powerful allies and role models. Most importantly, it promises to stay by their side until they’re launched in life: the program begins at the age of six and is moving up as the girls continue into the upper grades.
All photos courtesy of Soy Niña. Her sign reads, “The right to equality.”
It’s an unusual program in that its focus is very specific – to reduce the rates of teenage pregnancy in communities where they are extraordinarily high, and in a country struggling with sexual abuse and statutory rape – but it is working toward that goal in the broadest possible way, both in terms of the time invested and in terms of the base of self-esteem it is building in these girls. This is not a quick fix. And if you’ve been paying attention in Costa Rica, or most any country, you know that this problem is beyond quick fixes. It is about deep changes that must take place one person at a time.
Ask Ana Laura Araya (left) for a photo of her, and you’ll get is selfies with the people she wants to highlight: members of the Soy Niña community.
When I visited the program recently at one of their sites, Parque La Libertad (an incredible nonprofit facility that’s worth its own Boost), Ana Laura explained that we could sit in because today was a lighter day; on some others, the discussion among the girls and program staff is of course highly sensitive and not appropriate for outside visitors to overhear. Today, they were learning photography. Their faces were bright, full of enthusiasm. As I have so many times over the years when visiting programs that work with children, I felt my heart both sink and swell at the contrast between the unaffected exuberance on display across the lawn and the daunting statistics and life circumstances Ana Laura had described. Soy Niña works within that contrast, building on that natural resilience and strength to face the challenges head-on. I was amazed to see that because Ana Laura and her staff work with so many volunteers, they provide all this programming with a budget of just $30 per kid, per month.
Courtesy of Soy Niña
On this last day of September, a month that celebrates democracy and freedom in Costa Rica, I am proud to celebrate one woman, her staff and a passionate community who are making what I consider a massive contribution to both democracy and freedom: building future citizens, professionals, voters, women who know their own worth. I hope I will not soon forget the joy on the faces of the girls of Soy Niña, running across green grass in Desamparados. It was a balm for my soul, but it was much more than that. It was a call to action. It was a spark to urge us forward. It was a warning about the power of young women – a power we must protect, a power we cannot afford to lose.
Learn more about Soy Niña here. Added bonus: Their Instagram feed is a joy, often featuring portraits of young women from around Costa Rica explaining what being a girl here means to them. Follow for a source of inspiration and motivation. And as always – I’d love to hear from you. What are the organizations standing up for women’s rights where you live? Let me know.
I’m a writer in San José, Costa Rica, on a year-long quest to share daily posts on inspiring people, places and ideas from my adopted home as a kind of tonic during a rough time in the world. Sign up (top right of this page) to receive a little dose of inspiration every weekday in your mailbox; tell a friend; check out past posts; and please connect with me on Instagram or Facebook!
On Saturday night as I stood at our neighborhood school with my husband and daughter, listening to the kids sing a dizzying array of patriotic songs, one phrase reached out of the crowd and smacked me right across the face. It was a familiar one, from the Himno Patriótico del 15 de Setiembre: “Sepamos ser libres.” Let us know how to be free. But it struck me differently now than it ever had before.
In the context of the song, written by Juan F. Ferraz, it’s more of a rallying cry. That’s how it’s usually used in Costa Rica, as in, “Don’t forget that you’re free. No one is the boss of us.” But somehow on Saturday, I realized it could also be more of a prayer. Let us know how to be free. May we somehow learn how to carry this figurative torch we have been handed.
I don’t know about you, but I get a boost from the idea that while hatred, greed and just plain stupidity are certainly behind many of the problems in our societies, maybe we as a people aren’t necessarily bad. We just don’t know what we’re doing. We haven’t lost anything irreparably, not when those of us who do remember better times for our freedoms or our democracies had probably been dealt a winning hand in terms of race, gender or sexual orientation. I tell my daughter almost every day not to get frustrated because she’s still learning how to do something, that it’s a process. Democracy is harder than whistling or tying our shoes, so we are still screwing it up after hundreds of years. But despite it all, here we are, many of us anyway, learning, paying attention, still praying: may we know how to be free. (Is this just something I’m telling myself to feel better? Doesn’t prayer sometimes fall into that category? Isn’t it worth it, if it helps us keep going? Is this too deep for a Monday?)
I want to end with a concrete question for you: how do you approach being free, in the specific instance of your information intake? To you, does being free in today’s world mean making sure you spend enough time isolated from the terrifying events around us so that you are still free to think and breathe? Does it mean cultivating the freedom that comes from full mastery of the facts, and staying informed so you are free to respond to anything or person who comes at you? Do you somehow achieve both, and can you show me your ways? I struggle with this and would love to hear from you.
I’m a writer in San José, Costa Rica, on a year-long quest to share daily posts on inspiring people, places and ideas from my adopted home as a kind of tonic during a rough time in the world. Sign up (top right of this page) to receive a little dose of inspiration every weekday in your mailbox; tell a friend; check out past posts; and please connect with me on Instagram or Facebook!
katherine stanley obando 