geoporter-blackEach month we’re bringing you a progress report from our Geoporter program. The following is a report from our first Geoporter, Amy Work, about the work she has been doing in Costa Rica…

Since August of 2012, I have been living and working in Bahia Ballena, Costa Rica teaching and training educators, youth and community members how to use geospatial technologies, or GIS and GPS, to investigate their community resources or issues they think are important. I want to take just a few minutes to summarize some of the incredible Geoporter activities taking place here in this wonderful community that have occurred in the past month. There are so many things, but I’ll try to keep it short…

Making headlines in La Nacion, a national newspaper in Costa Rica

Three weeks ago, three of us from Geoporter took a trip to San Jose, a 3.5 hour car ride to meet with a reporter from La Nación, a national newspaper in Costa Rica to talk about the Geoporter Program and the projects we are working on here. Saturday, June 8, (which happened to also be World Oceans Day) an article came out in La Nación about one of the Geoporter projects: Monitoring Whales in Marino Ballena National Park.

Today, Monday, we are starting a series of three workshops to prepare additional guides and captains how to use GPS for monitoring whales in this project.

We are stoked about this article and one of the key things to remember is that the guides and captains in Bahía Ballena are the ones recording the observations and making the maps! What a great group of individuals to work with.

geoporter report