La Bola Café...a vision on the way to fruition!

Sorry to be a way for awhile. Things are moving quicker for us as an organization than we have the ability to chronicle. It is getting to be time to develop staff members who we can help us better paint the picture of what is happening.

In the picture above you see the proposed site for one of the current projects very much at the forefront of our work called the La Bola Café.

La Bola Café is a youth & family development café which will be located in the Los Colegios district of Moravia, Costa Rica, a northeast suburb of the nation´s capital, San José. Los Colegios means "the high schools" and is named so because of the presence of a concentration of high schools in close proximity to each other.

La Bola Café will be built as a warm & attractive coffee house similar to a Starbucks Coffee in the U.S. and will provide four different high-quality functions. It will be:

• An inviting coffee house where young people, their families and individuals in the area can walk into a soothing atmosphere with tasteful music playing in the background, an attractive ambience and the smell of good coffee and a well-trained and relational staff. Customers will be able to order coffee and pastries, purchase newspapers and some books and magazines and then sit down in either a comfortable armchair or at a table to read, talk with a friend, work or study.

• A full service internet café where young people, their families and individuals in the area can access the internet for an affordable fee, work on documents and projects using office software and print their work. This café would also provide technical assistance in each of these areas.

• An educational center where students can come and receive tutoring and assistance in English, other subjects and in completing their school assignments. Staff members would also be skilled in providing assistance in desktop publishing and putting together a resume.

• A positive youth development center where young people and their families can receive the necessary mentoring, community support and equipping resources to help them become healthy individuals and households capable of making a positive contribution to their family, neighborhood, church, community and to Costa Rica. Staff members will be deeply trained in all aspects of positive youth development including mentoring, leading small group communities and providing educational resources. A diverse schedule of activities will be provided each week.

Once developed and in business, this café model could very easily become our manner of expanding into other countries around the world.

Currently we are putting the finishing touches on the business plan in order to prepare to present it to corporations, foundations and individuals to attract the necessary capital to get it up and running by the end of the year.