When Mónica, Pippa and I joined forces to create a new, bilingual media organization, we wanted to build a space where professional journalists could ply their craft and engage in the longform work that is often very hard to sell and produce. However, we also knew we wanted to connect with people of all walks of life and professions with an opinion or an experience to share. Especially people from Costa Rica’s rural areas. Especially people who have never before been published by a media organization.
In the Voices section, you’ll find opinion pieces and personal reflections, content that’s serious and wistful and funny. Our dream is that, as we move forward from our Jan. 1, 2021 launch date, we’ll include more and more new contributors every single month. We’ll be finding these in a number of ways: they’ll be people we meet through our reporting, community leaders we hear about through the grapevine, and, we hope, people who reach out to us directly with an idea for a piece. And since part of our mission at El Colectivo 506 is to build storytelling and communciations capacity in Costa Rican communities, we hope to find ways to support new contributors so that they can go on to pitch and contribute stories beyond our organization as well.
Can you think of someone you’d love to read in this section? Ask that person to follow us and, even better, sign up for our emails in the Subscribe section. We named our organization El Colectivo 506 because we hope that a broad, diverse community will grow here. We hope you’ll be a part of it.
