Planeterra and its parent company, G Adventures, are working with the MIF in San Miguel de Sarapiqui with a small community coffee cooperative to develop their coffee tour program and provide access to the market for their small restaurant and other small associated businesses. Since an earthquake left this community with no access to many services and customers for several years, they have lacked opportunity to benefit from any growth in tourism.
There are opportunities to be involved through funding initiatives within this project. Donations or grants made to Planeterra for this project will supplement the funds provided by MIF and G Adventures to provide additional seed funding for the small business initiatives in Sarapiqui.
This project is part of Planeterra and G Adventures' technical cooperation agreement with the Multilateral Investment fund of the Inter-American Development Bank called Tour Operator's Plan for Sustainable Tourism Development, a three-year project spanned over 2012-2015 in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Peru. The expected impact of this project is to increase the competitiveness of medium and small enterprises (MSEs) by capitalizing on regional assets and by incorporating local value added to their businesses, which in turn are expected to result in increases of domestic product at the regional level. The principal result will be a replicable model that will optimize market access and efficiency in the tourism value chain by connecting MSEs with a large adventure tour operator from the point of product development, providing them access to a ready market, capabilities and the tools to serve the market demand.
