Five Binghamton University students, along with four students from Cornell University, John Hopkins University and University of California, Berkeley, traveled to Juanilama, Costa Rica this past spring break as part of a volunteer program that helped to paint a school.

The program was organized by Encountour, a company that puts together trips to Central America centered around volunteer projects for American college students.

Brian Powell, a senior majoring in biology at BU, said the trip, which ran from March 20 to 27, gave him and his peers an opportunity to experience Costa Rican culture in addition to a meaningful volunteer opportunity.

“We connected with the community by doing a lot of cultural activities with them,” Powell said. “We played soccer with the kids, we were able to try milking their cows, they taught us how to dance and we also learned how to cook some of their food.”

The students stayed with host families during the week in Costa Rica, except for the first and last nights when they lodged at hotels close to San Jose’s Juan Santamaria International Airport.

Viktorija Balsys-Spencer, a senior majoring in environmental geography who also went on the trip, said she had previously been on another Encountour-run trip to Guatemala in 2009.

“I decided to travel with the group to Costa Rica this March because I had such a great time volunteering with them in Guatemala two years ago,” she said.

Balsys-Spencer has worked for Encountour for three years, recruiting students at BU to attend one of the company’s trips.

The student volunteers who went to Costa Rica presented three potential projects to the citizens of Juanilama: organic farming, building a playground with recycled goods, or painting a local school. The community selected painting their local school as the most essential project.

Encountour’s projects aim to support either economic, cultural or environmental development in the countries in which it operates, according to Encountour’s official website.

Costa Rica relies economically on eco-tourism, and painting the school enhanced Juanilama’s local image, according to Balsys-Spencer.

“We have two primary goals,” said Andrew Steinberg, president of Encountour. “One is to change the perspective of college students in the U.S. and in Canada by enabling people to understand a reality completely different than their own and really allowing them to see the world. The other main goal is to make a meaningful contribution to the countries we work with in Central America.”

Volunteers on Encountour trips can sign up as individuals or in groups. Each group is assigned a volunteer coordinator who works with them on their community service project and also acts as a translator.

A typical trip run by the company costs more than $1,000 for participants with airfare.

“We work exclusively with college students, and because of that we make every effort possible to make our trips be as affordable as possible,” Steinberg said.