Known as the Switzerland of the Americas, Costa Rica is the development success story of the continent.
Having disbanded its army after the second world war and invested in public institutions over the past 70 years, Costa Rica finds itself reaping the benefits of these policies today. Its strong public health and education systems have enabled it to be ranked third in Latin America, and 28th in the world, on the Social Progress Index, which comprises metrics on basic human needs such as nutrition and shelter; wellbeing factors such as access to knowledge and communications; and opportunity, which encompasses personal rights, tolerance and inclusion.
Costa Rica is prospering from its growing tourism and service industries and is ranked as an upper middle-income country by the World Bank. But unlike its prosperous alpine counterpart, this small nation faces the challenge of a 21% poverty rate, which it must tackle at a time of decreasing international aid. This is spurring Costa Rica’s previously well-supported NGO sector to look to new sources of sustainable income.
The recently announced Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a focus to these challenges. Adopted by all UN members, the SDGs set the world’s development agenda for the next 15 years and cover everything from basic sanitation and climate change to gender rights and inequality. They are leading the Costa Rican government to formulate measurable targets for progress by 2030 and to consult with all sectors of society on how these ambitious goals can be achieved through collective action.
The consultation is being led by the Federación de Organizaciones Sociales, which has represented the NGO sector since 1969 and was re-launched in 2015 with a new vision and programmes to meet the challenges of the SDGs. It is setting up working groups for key areas of the SDGs, bringing together civil society organisations to meet, plan, implement and evaluate practices. It is also seizing on the momentum generated by the SDGs to call for support from government, civil and private sectors to reshape and strengthen the role of nonprofit organisations and build a more supportive ecosystem for social enterprise.
Social enterprises offer a financially sustainable model that provides an alternative to Costa Rica’s overstretched charity sector and can deliver significant social progress. Since they generate revenue, they can tap into investment opportunities unavailable to NGOs, reinvest their income to support their social mission and add value to communities and local environment.
Founded in 1991, social enterprise Asembis illustrates the impact that social enterprises can deliver. Costa Rica has a public health system that is the envy of its neighbours, but it struggles to provide timely services to all citizens. As a result, many who can afford it turn to the private sector for daily health needs such as glasses, hearing aids and dentistry. Asembis has made such private health care affordable to all by charging higher fees to wealthy customers than to poorer ones and by making savings from high volume treatments. It has been so successful that in May it is opening its first clinic in neighbouring Nicaragua.
Nutrivida is a younger social enterprise looking to make a significant contribution to ending all forms of malnutrition. Founded by private Costa Rican beverage company Florida and inaugurated by Muhammad Yunus in 2013, it aims to eradicate malnutrition in Central America and Haiti by producing fortified soups, drinks and children’s porridge and selling these at affordable prices to those on low incomes through a network of women sales reps.
In order to scale the impact social enterprises can deliver, the Federación de Organizaciones Sociales is lobbying government to offer tax and procurement incentives to support investments and government purchasing from social enterprises. It is also calling for innovative new financial instruments from the private sector to provide adequate and appropriate funding for the sector. In addition, it is discussing the legal forms available for social enterprises and looking to other countries for examples of stamps, badges and certification schemes. And, by working with international bodies such as Social Value International to promote impact measurement, this organisation aims to invest in research that highlights the contribution the sector is making and could make to GDP, jobs and equality.
Meanwhile, the country’s exterior trade departments COMEX and PROCOMER supported an initiative, funded by the British Embassy, to build social enterprise capacity to export.
Costa Rican social entrepreneurs welcome these initiatives, believing that they can help unlock unique approaches to many of the challenges targeted by the SDGs, support NGOs to become more financially self-sustaining, and encourage transnational corporations to spin out social enterprises like Nutrivida.
Read more on the role of social enterprise in achieving the SDGs.
To find out about opportunities to buy from or invest in social enterprises in Costa Rica, contact the Federación de Organizaciones Sociales: marco@foscr.org
Anne Salter is a social enterprise specialist from the UK. In February 2015 she represented Social Enterprise UK in a project with the Federacion de Organizaciones Sociales de Costa Rica as a part of the British Embassy in Costa Rica programme, Empresas sociales exportadores.
Twitter @AnneSalte
Content on this page is paid for and provided by the British Council, sponsor of the international social enterprise hub