Over the last few weeks, I’ve been organizing and holding focus groups in different communities in the upper part of the Bellbird Corridor. These were actually the first focus groups I had ever led. While I’m sure I made a few mistakes along the way, they definitely helped me move my research forward and were a good learning experience!

The process of organizing the focus groups in rural Costa Rica gave me a whole new appreciation for the ease by which we are able to organize meetings by email back home. Many people in this area don’t use email, so after getting lists of recommended participants from local collaborators, I had to either call them or go find them at their places of business. I was a little intimated about this at first, but it ended up being a good opportunity to make connections with lots of different people in the community (and practice my Spanish 🙂 )