There’s really no place like a rainforest. No, really. These amazingly diverse forests deep in Central America do more than you might think for the environment of the whole world.

Though Costa Rica seems like a tiny dot on a map compared to some of the states and geographical regions in North America, it harbors one of the world’s most incredible places: thousands of acres of richly biodiverse rainforest land.

Why are rainforests important?

Climate Matters

Think back to science class. Through respiration and the regular processes of growth and decay in nature, plants give the world oxygen. That oxygen is now more important than ever, with all the pollution created by our increasingly industrialized culture.

Rainforests give back a huge amount of clean, fresh air into the environment — and that makes a worldwide difference. For instance, the fresh, clean air of the Costa Rican rainforests benefits more than just Costa Rican residents; it actually positively affects all of the world’s climates, helping to keep them balanced.

This is just another marvelous feature of a planet whose processes all work together better than a puzzle to form a coherent, healthy whole, and you can make a difference in helping to sustain it.

Biological Diversity

Rainforests also provide a home to thousands of plants and animals that you won’t find anywhere else in the world. According to researchers, there are as many as 12,000 different kinds of plants, 838 species of birds, over 1,200 different types of butterflies, well over 400 different species of reptiles and amphibians (that’s a lot of lizards and snakes!) and about 232 species of mammals.

Few regions anywhere in the world are quite as biologically diverse as the Costa Rican rainforests. These are key areas of the world to protect.

Ways to Make a Difference

Get out there

So, what can you do to help protect this one-of-a-kind resource? Well, you’ve got a few options. GLA’s Nature’s Kaleidoscope service program lets high school volunteer abroad students experience that incredibly diverse ecosystem, work with researchers to help protect the rainforests, and learn more about ways they can apply those conservation skills in their own communities.

As part of the Nature’s Kaleidoscope program, students will spend a summer volunteering in rural communities surrounded by rainforests, talk with the locals (maybe brush up on their Spanish a bit) and learn to identify the plants and animals they see around them.

High school volunteer abroad participants will also get to help build tree nurseries and plant trees to help re-forest deforested land and even work with biologists to collect species as part of an ongoing research project.

Help from a Distance

Though going to an area and working with your own hands is the best way to truly appreciate the culture you’re making a difference in, you don’t actually have to log all those airline miles to make a difference. Programs like the Adopt-An-Acre organization allow you to get involved and make a difference from your own home.

If you can’t travel to Costa Rica to work in the rainforests yourself, you might even want to consider sponsoring someone else to go work with those in the local community. Don’t underestimate the difference you can make right from your own home!

Regardless of what you choose, knowing the situation of the rainforests – and of the environment in your own area — is the first step to working toward a beautifully sustainable world.

The world is talking about “green” living – sustainability and energy efficiency to protect our environment, both at home and abroad. Through local efforts like the Portland Sustainability Institute and Siemens’ National League of Cities, individual boroughs and towns across the U.S. are taking action to improve the health of both residents and the environment they live in.

The Portland Sustainability Institute – and organizations like it in New York City, Chicago, Atlanta and many other locations across the nation – find and implement unique ways to capitalize on limited city space. Organizers and volunteers use rooftops, playgrounds, courtyards and public areas to cultivate healthy, “green” space.

These spaces help make the most of urban areas to build healthy, environmentally-friendly cities that couple efficiency for residents with care for the environment that will make it habitable and welcoming for future generations.

Sustainability Efforts in America

The Sustainable Cities Institute sponsored by Siemens Corporation makes a strong case for a green infrastructure. But how can the bridges, roads, tunnels and transportation systems that make our society work really be “green”? It takes a little creativity and research of some of the problems these urban areas face to find new ways.

The environmentally aware have found many creative ways to craft an infrastructure that will form the foundation for green cities that will be sustainable for many generations to come.

Infrastructure Matters

By crafting roads and building in ways that support healthy stormwater runoff, pollution can be curtailed before it causes major problems for a city’s water supply. Efforts like this do more than just helping the environment; they also help improve public health, save on energy costs and diminish the damages of flooding, especially in flood-prone areas.

Green Roofs

Depending on the location and architecture of the space being considered, green roofs are also a great way to get growing things into a concrete jungle, brighten a space, provide natural insulation that can help reduce heating and cooling costs, and possibly even reduce greenhouse gases.

By thoughtfully reworking neighborhoods and using green practices in new construction and infrastructure design, city planners and developers are finding countless creative ways to save energy costs. But this trend isn’t just related to America or its cities.

Going Green Overseas

Even when we step outside our comfort zones and into an unfamiliar field to study abroad or volunteer overseas, we have options to share some of what we’ve learned with different cultures and help set up/teach green practices around the world.

GLA offers a selection of service trips that let you get involved in protecting the environments of other nations, working toward sustainability and conservation of beautifully unique, biodiverse areas. High school summer programs allow future leaders and city planners to get a taste of another culture and learn about conservation and city planning. This type of study trip makes a fantastic investment of a summer that will pay dividends for life.

Here are a few of GLA’s top environmental high school volunteer abroad programs that let students experience the diversity of green culture for themselves.

Empowering Island Communities in Bali

As if it weren’t enough to spend a summer on a beautiful Pacific island, now students can also get work with cutting edge non-profit organizations on the Empowering Island Communities service trip. Students also help out with sustainability projects unique to an island culture.

Protect the Pacific in Costa Rica

GLA’s Protecting the Pacific service trip gives you the chance to explore the lush Costa Rican rainforests and ways to conserve this Central American gem. Students and volunteers learn about conservation of beautiful ocean waters — and maybe even surf the waves and snorkel to see the rich, diverse ecosystems living under the surface!

Sustainability in India

A trip to India gives volunteers a look into the environmental sustainability issues surrounding the Himalayan mountains, especially small Tibetan villages and the challenges residents face. By hiking those snow-capped mountains and hearing from refugees of the Tibetan refugee community, students will get a taste of sustainability and culture they couldn’t find anywhere else.

As I walked into my first grade classroom eleven years ago, I was a nervous  wreck. The sparse interactions I’d had with people outside family left me overwhelmed  by the sheer number of students. Now, as a senior, I am attending the high school right down the street from the elementary and middle schools I grew up in, with the same students who have become my extended family, the vastness of the community I once saw diminished into a small, tightly-knit golden bubble

For my whole life, I have called San Marino, California, home, and though it is always bright, sunny, and beautiful, it has an overshadowing sense of homogeneity. A majority of my friends share my Taiwanese heritage, and nearly everyone comes from an upper-middle-class background. San Marino is so small that everyone knows each other, and rumors spread in the blink of an eye. Seeking something new, I set out to travel during my summers, and though I have tremendous pride in my hometown, I have expanded my perspective on the enormity of the world. Last summer, I traveled to Moshi, a rural town nestled in the heart of Tanzania with Global Leadership Adventures. I spent three weeks teaching at Himo and Korona primary schools, where enthusiastic children eagerly welcomed me with songs in Swahili each morning. Their pure spirit struck me, as did their ability to live happy lives regardless of their deprivations: a lack of school materials, inadequate staffing, and poor health conditions.

After teaching in Tanzania, I immediately began to appreciate my own education, which I’d always taken for granted. I am lucky to be able to attend a beautiful, modern two-storied school. I have the privilege of taking rigorous, college-level courses in subject areas that intrigue me. Diverse activities outside of class provide chances to develop hobbies and interests. Before seeing the educational system in Tanzania, I never fathomed what it was like to be in a classroom without electricity, teachers, and clean facilities. Because I had never taken the time to explore parts of the world where educational conditions are dire, it was challenging for me to even realize that there were people in the world who were not as well off as I was.

Teaching in Tanzanian classrooms spawned my aspiration to make education more accessible to people in developing parts of the world. Education is a ladder people have to climb to attain the prosperity I believe everyone deserves. I have seen firsthand that people in underprivileged circumstances work just as hard as their more fortunate peers in trying to better their education when given the opportunity. I aspire to volunteer for the Peace Corps, living in an underdeveloped country, where I can work with locals on educational issues, mentoring both teachers and students, as well as teach in classrooms. After the Peace Corps, I hope to take my commitment to a higher level by creating an education-oriented NGO abroad. My dream is to create a more sustainable future through educating the underprivileged.