Vol. 1

This post is part of our #TeamTuesday series, highlighting the incredible people who make the Costa Rican Humanitarian Foundation what it is.

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By Jacob Killburg

Doña Antonia

María Antonia Zequeira García, affectionately known as Doña Antonia or simply “Abuela”, was born in Joyalpa, Nicaragua, the seventh of eleven siblings in a close-knit Catholic family. Life in Nicaragua was marked by hardship and limited opportunities. In 1992, at age 38, she left Nicaragua alone in search of work and safety, eventually making her home in La Carpio, Costa Rica. She later brought her two eldest children to join her and gave birth to her youngest daughter in Costa Rica.

Doña Antonia’s connection to the Costa Rican Humanitarian Foundation began by chance. One day she came to buy vegetables and was told they were looking for someone to step in as a cook. That was seven years ago, and since then, the Foundation has become her second home. She prepares breakfast and lunch for the CRHF team 7 days a week and for volunteer groups that sometimes amount to as many as 100 mouths to feed in one day. Despite this, she insists on being left to handle the task alone, and delivers a delicious meal to every plate. These meals carry her warmth and generosity, nourishing the body and the spirit of those around her. She describes herself as “a fish in water” when cooking, and at the Foundation she has found companionship and purpose.

Her path has been full of trials: losing her partner to COVID-19, navigating her daughter’s lifelong health challenges, caring for a son through leukemia, and mourning the deaths of siblings and other loved ones. Financial strain, medical hardships, and immigration struggles within her family have tested her strength repeatedly. Yet, she has carried herself with dignity and perseverance through it all.

Doña Antonia embodies the heart of La Carpio—resilient, resourceful, and community-minded. She has turned hardship into wisdom, grief into compassion, and work into a labor of love. She believes deeply in God’s strength, which she feels sustains her in the hardest moments, and she keeps hope alive for her children’s futures. In every corner of the Foundation, her presence, like a steady flame, is impossible not to admire.