The Vida Nueva Association for Integral Promotion of Projects for underage workers, adolescent mothers and for battered women, now called only Vida Nueva, was founded in 1996 to fight the difficulties suffered by these neighborhoods. Creating this association was initiated by the Congress for Woman’s Dignity, with the support of the Catholic Church. Among the founding members is the Archbishop of San Isidro (Monsignor Ignacio Trejos), teachers, social workers, psychologists, lawyers, farmers, housemothers and businessmen.
The only foreign founding member and president of many years of the Vida Nueva Association is Roland Spendlingwimmer, who has lived in Costa Rica for the last 30 years with his family. In the year 2000 he received the prize for human rights of the province of High Austria (for the project with the children of the streets and refugees of Costa Rica.
