Our founder Amanda Ready met a community of women in Costa Rica who were unemployed, without education, without adequate medical attention, living in poverty and being victims of violence without long-term support. Having experience working in social services and in the field of mental health, Amanda began offering mental health therapy to these women to get to know their emotional challenges. After many sessions with them, Amanda learned, that not only mental health support was needed, but also food, clothing, health, education and employment opportunities.

 

She spent the next three months in Costa Rica forming relationships, gaining confidence, creating programs and empowering leaders who would carry out her vision and eventually execute daily operations. Once she returned to the United States, Amanda founded Ready to Empower in 2013 and in 2014 RTE was granted tax-exempt status (501c3).

 

Based on this, the Árbol de Esperanza Association was formed in Costa Rica, to work in connection with RTE in order to empower the community. It became an organization that works around the strengthening and accompaniment of the processes of empowerment of women and the development of their autonomy, from an approach that makes the emergence of leadership and collective articulation possible.

 

We started with the psychology service, later the job skills service and the social work service were incorporated, and are currently busy with the coordination of development and communication. These activities allow us to work in different fields and to offer programs and services according to the realities, context and conditions of the community.

 

An important field that allows us to meet our objectives, is the design of strategic alliances incorporating a broad relationship between the organization, community, universities, professionals, companies and institutions. In this way we ensure that we incorporate social responsibility for social transformation. In the same way, volunteers and collaborators allow us to sustain this great project that has shown incredible results over the years.

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