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On Christmas Eve in 2012, Esteban Blanco was eating lunch at a Limón beach and noticed the restaurant owner giving a bag of food to a passing man. He asked about it, and the owner explained that he’d set up a system to give away unused food at the end of the day to the community’s homeless population. Right away, Esteban posted on Facebook, inviting his friends to donate food for a Christmas dinner for people experiencing homelessness in San José. The result? The friends distributed Christmas dinners that very night. 

“That was the start of our group,” explains the website of the organization Esteban went on to found: Amigos of Costa Rica affiliate Fundación Lloverá. “Lloverá” means “it will rain”—used in the sense of “lloverá comida,” or “it will rain food.” Today, the foundation provides not only food, but also a wide range of services for homeless populations from its facility in Pavas. And as Costa Rica’s migrant and refugee populations have swelled in recent years, the foundation has expanded its work to serve people displaced by humanitarian crises, in need of a safe place to restart their interrupted lives.

Fundación Lloverá provides food and a wide range of services for homeless populations as well as migrant and refugee communities displaced by humanitarian crises. “Lloverá” means “it will rain”—used in the sense of “lloverá comida,” or “it will rain food.”
—Read more about Amigos of Costa Rica affiliate Fundación Lloverá »

The world is a funny place. That same December of 2012, just as a chance encounter was changing the course of Esteban’s life, Michale Gabriel changed her course as well and moved to Costa Rica. Like so many who end up here, she became increasingly involved in efforts to serve her adopted country, including a leadership role on the Amigos of Costa Rica Board of Directors. And in January 2024, she would end up making her own Facebook post and inviting her own friends to pull together resources, just as Esteban had, years earlier: this time, to help the beneficiaries of the organization Esteban built.

“I am collecting clothes, shoes, toys, and hygiene products,” she wrote in her post, inviting people to drop by her home in Belén to drop off the gifts. “Venezuelan migrants—parents and children—have battled treacherous terrain, faced death and torture in order to pursue a better life. They have arrived in Costa Rica with nothing more than the clothing on their backs…. The shelter is providing a safe place to sleep, food to eat, and for the children—enrichment  experiences to help heal their souls.”

Just as Esteban’s call resulted in immediate action by his friends years before, so did Michale’s. Her doorbell kept ringing: friends, neighbors, and people she’d never met before. Her homemade chocolate-chip cookies, made as a thank you, flew off the plate. By the end of the day, her car was packed to the brim with clothing and supplies. For others who couldn’t donate in person, Michale provided the link where they could support the Fundación Lloverá through Amigos of Costa Rica. 

At a time when changes and cuts to development aid have affected nonprofits around the world, every donation—from a set of baby clothes to a financial contribution—makes a big difference. Esteban says that support from all sources is more urgently needed than ever; his top priority right now is raising funds so that Lloverá can house and feed more members of Costa Rica’s drastically increasing refugee population, particularly children and teens. Recent policy changes mean that thousands of migrant families are being sent back south from the U.S. border, ending up in Costa Rica. His shelter is at 150% capacity. 

“Many families are coming back down here, damaged emotionally, physically, health-wise. The ‘American dream’ was a failure for them, and they are devastated,” he says. “Many come to Costa Rica because of our favorable economic situation, but when they arrive, they go straight to the street: sick children, pregnant mothers.”

“Many families are coming back down here, damaged emotionally, physically, health-wise. The ‘American dream’ was a failure for them, and they are devastated.”
—Esteban Blanco

Michale says that as she watched these ripple effects of policies in her home country of the United States, she wanted to tap back into concrete actions that were within her control.

“We can start to feel we have no power, but I always believe that you can give where your feet are planted,” she says. “My feet are planted in Costa Rica, so I have an obligation and a desire to make a difference here.”

And migrants here were the population she wanted to serve.

“If we’re U.S. citizens, we’re all migrants, in some generation in the past—unless we’re Native Americans,” she says. “Maybe not fleeing those circumstances [faced by Venezuelans], but certainly looking for a better life.”

Because of her time as an Amigos Board Member—where she served with such commitment and passion that she has now been named the organization’s first ever Board Member Emeritus—Michale just so happened to know exactly where to turn. In May 2024, on one of the field visits that the Amigos Board makes to the organization’s affiliates, Michale visited the Fundación Lloverá facility in western San José.

Michale has worked as a professional storyteller, and as a leadership and storytelling mentor and coach, for over 40 years. She says that when she can’t stop thinking about a story, she knows it deserves further attention—and she heard multiple stories that day that have stayed with her ever since. In particular, she remembers meeting a Venezuelan man who was at the shelter with his little girls, buzzing with excitement about a trip to a local museum that day for children housed at the shelter. He and his wife had made the difficult decision to leave home and make the dangerous trip through the Darién Gap because they were not able to feed their children. 

“They were surviving on half a pound of chicken a month for the whole family,” Michale recalls. “This is a man who had gone through the forest, had seen people dead on the side of the path.”

Shortly after the family’s arrival in Costa Rica, his wife died. 

“He said, ‘I have to survive for my daughters and my faith in God,’” Michale says. “I was so moved by him, and the loss of his wife, and his recognition that he was still a father. And his gratitude to the shelter for giving him a place where he could sleep through the night without fear.”

As she collected and dropped off the donations, she says she thought about the man’s daughters and how carefully he had dressed them for their special day out. She offers this guidance for anyone making in-kind donations: don’t see it as a chance to get rid of things you don’t want or like, especially if they’re worn out or damaged. See it as a chance to share the best you can offer, brand-new or just slightly used. A chance to shower the recipient with love, through carefully chosen objects.

For Michale, the right question is: 

"'What can I take from my drawers and my closets that is a representation of me and my family, that is fresh and clean and is gifted with love?’... The items that we donate are a reflection of us and our values. The people we are giving them to may have nothing, but they are worth something. Our donations should be a reflection of their worth.”

More broadly, she offers this for all those concerned about world events: “I don’t have to sit back and watch it happen. I can look around my community here in Costa Rica and say, ‘Where can I add value?’... I would invite everybody to think about, where can I show love? And then take action.”