What is the best advice you’ve received from a professor?
I was in my first year at EARTH and struggling to learn Spanish, among other difficulties, when a member of the faculty talked with me and his words helped me a lot. He said, “Rafael, you must persevere, you must have faith, you have to look further and never be satisfied with what you have already accomplished. Always strive to be excellent and to be the change that’s needed, because that is where you can really make a difference, and that is what an EARTH student is supposed to do.”

What are your plans after graduation?
I’m excited to go back home and work in rural extension in the region of Marañón, Brazil. My community cultivates a lot of grains, sugar cane and soybeans, and my aunts and uncles are rice farmers. Many small producers do not have the ability to fully develop their projects, so my idea is to work with these people who possess so much potential, and help them to improve. I want to apply what I’ve learned at EARTH in my community and convey to everyone how important it is to protect the environment.

What do you think is the value of the practical experience you gained at EARTH?
I think personally that when someone actually does things, it’s the best way to learn. It’s not just about taking theoretical classes, which is also very important, but using that theory in real life is fundamental.

What are your plans after graduation?
My goal for the future is to start a company for small coffee producers. Previously, Colombia was the biggest coffee exporter but now we are in a crisis. The farmers are paid only about 10% of the price that their coffee is sold at, and with that they don’t make enough money to live. My family and my region depend on coffee, and so I want to form a farmers cooperative that will fight for 30-40% of what the coffee is sold at, to give those producers a better life.

What have you learned at EARTH?
When I arrived I was just 17 years old, and I knew very little about agriculture. Here at EARTH I have learned a lot about patience and tolerance, and especially about being open to new things, how to generate new ideas and that special entrepreneurial emphasis that we get at EARTH. I’ve matured a lot, even my parents have noticed.

What plans do you have after graduation?
In reality, I have many options to look into after I graduate. My region is located in the Amazon and there are so many opportunities to have your own business, but first I have to work to save some investment capital. I could work with my dad, who has a cattle business. His current system is very rustic; he only feeds the animals on pasture grass and doesn’t work with supplements or concentrates. For what he knows, it works well, but I’ve seen that I can get great results with trying new things, and I hope I can grow his business.

There is also a Peruvian EARTH graduate who has started his own fruit packing plant with small producers in the area and doing research in chestnuts, so that could also be a good option to work with him.

During the graduation ceremony, the University awarded Karina the 2013 EARTH Prize in recognition of her academic excellence, values, and social and environmental commitment.

Tell us about your graduation project.
I did my graduation project together with my classmate Marybell Muñoz, and we worked in an indigenous community in the Sixaola area in the Caribbean. They don’t have running water or electricity, the children don’t have access to school and they live in a remote village in the middle of a banana plantation. Basically, they have a lot of problems. There are 52 families, in total between 240 and 300 people. The process was initially one of empowerment; we wanted them to feel capable of generating change and organizing themselves. This is something that is achieved in the long term, and they still have a long way to go. Right now, the hope is that they continue to feel empowered and they start some more concrete projects to improve the conditions in which they live. It’s always difficult to measure the impact that you have on a person or a community, but we’ve seen a man who doesn’t know how to read or write who is now able to organize groups of people and lead discussions. For us, that was the best gift that our project gave us.

What plans do you have after graduation?
For now I feel that with the tools and information I have received at EARTH that it’s necessary to go out and start doing things. Hopefully it will be in the area of community development, which has been the emphasis I’ve chosen during all four years at EARTH. My idea is to look for funds and get financing from a non-profit or another organization so that the project in Sixaola can grow and involve many more people.

What does your family think about the education you’ve received at EARTH?
During all of my years here at the University, my family has been fascinated by my experience. At first, they were concerned about how things would be in Costa Rica, who would I be with, how I would feel, all those kinds of things. When I went back to Colombia, I told them about the whole academic model, what the University is based on, how they treated us and how the professors acted in front of the students and they were so pleased with what they heard. As the saying goes, “All good things must come to an end,” and now that I am about to finish, my family is so happy because I am the first college graduate in my family and it is very important to them.

What plans do you have after graduation?
After graduation I’m going to Colombia because I already have a job waiting for me with the same company that I did my internship, Catatumbo Rubber Company in my state of Tibú. I really liked the job I did there with African oil palm crops and rubber trees. I also worked with small producers, giving them technical assistance. My region has been hit hard by drug wars and delinquency because it’s an area that produces a lot of cocaine. One of the objectives of cultivating African oil palm is to replace the coca crops with these kinds of alternatives, which are less dangerous and more profitable for the producers. I think that with no cocaine, there won’t be any war. I want that for my region.

Why did you decide to come EARTH and did it meet your expectations?
I always wanted to study agronomy, especially since it’s what my family has been doing for hundreds of years and it’s what they instilled in me. From what I researched before I came, EARTH qualified as one of the best agricultural schools in the world, and I had good recommendations from family members who had studied here before. My expectations were few, really all I wanted to do was learn. EARTH exceeded my expectations enormously; I not only got the knowledge but also the experience that made me a professional and a leader.

What plans do you have after graduation?
I want to go home and work with banana crops. Almost everything that I’ve done in the last four years has been in bananas: my internship, my Graduation Project, my elective classes, everything. My family has a banana farm and most of it is organic, but there has been one field that has been impossible to keep organic. Now it’s my turn to try and fix it. My sister Sofia graduated from EARTH in 2009 and is working with my dad already, so I’ll be working with her as well.