Minnesota roots of a Costa Rican bakery

As a native Minnesotan, my favorite place in the world is Grand Marais, Minnesota, a tiny port town on the northern shore of Lake Superior, about a six-hour drive from where I grew up. I’ve spent countless peaceful days up there with friends and family throughout my life, and it was the last trip I took before I joined the Peace Corps. Grand Marais is a place full of love and coziness, where you can spend hours on the rocky harbor reading a book to the sound of the waves. Hours away from the nearest city, its residents lean into a slower pace of life.

For the past 8 months I’ve been serving in a village high in the mountains of Pérez Zeledón, Costa Rica. My main projects include supporting a women’s group with business and marketing planning, guiding the local tourism association through an environmental initiative, and facilitating meetings for a local event center.

During my service here, sharing pieces of Minnesota with my new community has been a way to stay connected to home while building deeper bonds here. These moments also open up a space for members of my Costa Rican community to share their culture with me.

In January, I had an amazing opportunity to bridge my communities in a deeper way when 11 volunteers came to town with Bricks to Bread, a Minnesotan nonprofit founded by Nancy Alvarado, a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Costa Rica from 1989 through 1991. Bricks to Bread empowers and supports women in Costa Rica to start businesses and create financial self-sufficiency through bread ovens. The women’s group in my town has been working with Bricks to Bread since the beginning of 2024 and preparing for this moment: building a brick oven and starting their own bakery which will provide income sources for six women, their families, and the local development association. We were so excited that the moment had finally come, and I was thrilled that eight of the volunteers were from Minnesota.

The members of the women’s group, the Bricks to Bread volunteers, and I spent a beautiful and intense week together building the oven, cooking Tico recipes such as picadillo and arroz con pollo, touring and learning about my community, and sharing stories, jokes, and many aspects of our two cultures. The Costa Rican women were shocked to hear about saunas and ice baths, where Minnesotans go back and forth between ice cold water and scalding steaming rooms for fun. The volunteers even brought Minnesota gifts like illustrated hand towels and pure maple syrup for their Costa Rican hosts.

The origin of Bricks to Bread began with Nancy’s visit back to her community in Costa Rica in 2012. While there she found out a family had lost their sources of income and didn’t know how to recover. At the same time, one of her friends was in Grand Marais learning to build brick ovens at the folk school. Nancy had a “crazy idea” to help the Costa Rican family start a bakery with an artisan-made brick oven. With the help of friends from Minnesota, the family built the oven—and it was a success. Since then, Bricks to Bread has built 23 ovens throughout Costa Rica.

Listening to this story, I was smiling ear to ear. I couldn’t believe that something so meaningful for the women’s group in my community traced back to my favorite place in the world. Two tiny towns across the world, forever connected by a brick oven and loving, hard-working people. I now have a renewed appreciation for Margaret Mead’s words, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”