Coffee runs deep in Santa Cruz. It’s the crop, yes, but it’s also the culture, the common ground, the thread that connects generations in this highland community of Costa Rica. In a place where relationships have been built over time between families, farmers, and local leaders, change does not come from the outside. It grows from within.
Alejandra has spent years working alongside the families who grow it. She’s close enough to see the quiet shifts others might miss.
Young people here are quietly disengaging. Not dramatically, not all at once, but steadily drifting from the values, the relationships, and the sense of belonging that shaped the generations before them. And the families around them, stretched thin by long hours and competing demands, are struggling to bridge that gap.
But Alejandra has decided to do something about it.
Alejandra is an accountant, a business administrator, a mother, and a leader who has built her credibility not through titles but through years of showing up for the people around her. That combination of professional skill and lived experience gives her something rare: the ability to see a community's real needs and the practical know-how to address them.
Her response to what she was seeing is called An Afternoon of Coffee and Purpose, a series of workshops centered on finances, spiritual formation, and leadership development. And at the heart of it isn't a curriculum, but connection. She wants parents and teenagers in the same room, learning together, rediscovering shared values, and strengthening the ties that hold families and communities together.
Alejandra’s initiative and resourcefulness is refreshing. She isn't just waiting for outside resources, and she’s not starting from zero. She's mapped out the assets present in her community like churches, meeting spaces, community associations, and networks of people who are ready to contribute. She's working on a detailed budget and a clear timeline. She knows her community's strengths, and she's building on them.
Her vision is simple and patient—to equip this generation, strengthen these families, and create something rooted enough to last.
She's also building from what she loves. Folkloric dance, coffee culture, and the richness of her community's heritage. These aren't just decorations around the edges of her program. They’re more like the foundation of it. She is wanting families to walk into something that feels like theirs, not something imported.
Her vision is simple and patient—to equip this generation, strengthen these families, and create something rooted enough to last.
ThriveWorx became deeply connected with Alejandra at our annual Leader Summit, the beginning of a year-long leadership journey focused on personal growth and community transformation. Through that process she is getting equipped with tools, frameworks, and a network of other leaders walking a similar road. But training is only part of the story.
The value is in simply knowing her personally. Over time, the conversations have gone deeper than strategy and planning. They've become the kind where we get to check in on what's underneath: her faith, her family, her own capacity and health as a leader. Ours is a role of supporting to ensure the vision is sustainable, that she has what she needs, and that she's being cared for as a person as she cares for others. Because we believe that healthy leaders build healthy communities. And part of walking alongside someone well means caring about the whole person.
Alejandra is ready to take the next step, and ThriveWorx is committed to staying in that journey with her.
Connect with us to learn more about partnering with local leaders in Costa Rica and Guatemala working to cultivate redemptive change.