Brick Ovens Change Communities

In Minnesota we are fortunate. If you lose your job or barely make enough money to make ends meet, there is help. We have state run social service programs and nonprofits focused on supplying extra food, bus passes and housing vouchers. In rural Costa Rica that type of assistance doesn’t exist. Families in tough situations rely on each other to meet their basic needs. It is through the generosity of rural communities themselves that help their neighbors get by.

Bricks to Bread ovens, although built for a single family, help the community. Costa Ricans are incredibly generous. Even the poorest of the poor will offer food and drink, no questions asked, to someone that stops by. Even if the family has little themselves they will scrounge up what they can. A drink made of oatmeal or rice mixed with sugar, a tortilla, a cooked banana, they will provide.

Now image a brick oven is built for one of those generous families. Suddenly, they have a means to support themselves and another way to give back to their community. For those that can afford it, fresh bread and other baked goods provide a healthier alternative to the processed bread shipped in from San Jose. For those with too poor to pay, it means they have something to eat when they need it most.

Bricks to Bread’s ovens change lives; not only for the family who receives the oven, but for the donors who made it a possibility, all the volunteers who helped make the oven a reality, for the business owners where we buy our building materials, and for the local men we hire to help with some aspects of the build. Bricks to Bread ovens help communities and families. They change lives with nourishment, encourage with inspirational stories, provide hope and create new leaders, all with a brick and a loaf.