San Jose, Costa Rica -- Newly inaugurated Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla offered warm support Tuesday to a visiting GPFF team. “In Costa Rica you will always have an open door. Costa Rica has the moral resolve that is important to promote the work that you are doing,” she told the group.

GPFF chair, Dr. Hyun Jin Moon, congratulated the president on her recent inauguration and urged her to continue Costa Rica’s tradition of finding original approaches to peace building. “Costa Rica has done so much to provide innovative leadership in the world. Let’s work together to continue this great tradition and help build models of peace around the world,” he said.

Costa Rica has had no standing army since 1948 when it was abolished after a civil war. Unlike many of its neighbors it has not had a civil war since then. In fact, the previous president, Oscar Arias Sanchez, won the 1987 Nobel peace prize for his efforts to resolve civil wars in other Central American countries.

Dr. Moon suggested that the southern hemisphere could offer new models for peace and development. These could reinvigorate values and morals in capitalism at a time when the northern hemisphere is paralyzed by an economic crisis caused in large part by greed and the pursuit of self interest.

The president said that she knew the importance of values in solving current global social problems. She is a protégé of former president Arias, under whom she served as vice president. She is Costa Rica’s first woman president, and the fifth in Latin America, winning election in a landslide last February. She is known as a social conservative, opposed to abortion and gay marriage.

Members of the GPFF team briefed her on current projects. GPFF President Young Jun Kim explained the GPF program for the year, with regional Global Peace Festivals in Nepal, Indonesia, and Paraguay culminating in the Global Peace Convention in Nairobi, Kenya this November.

David Caprara of Global Peace Service Alliance (GPSA) invited the president to lead a Latin American delegation to the Nairobi convention and to support an initiative to form a Latin American Union. The inaugural meeting will be held in Paraguay in October.

“I believe in providence and I believe we have met for a reason,” added Dr. Moon, who first met the president in 2008 when she was vice president.

“We will make our best efforts to attend one of the GPF programs this year,” the president assured him.

Dr. Charles Phillips outlined the GPSA plan to create a global peace corps through service partnerships and a global coalition of social entrepreneurs.

Vice Presidents Alfio Piva Mesen and Luis Liberman Ginsburg were also at the meeting. Vice president Ginsburg briefed the group on Costa Rica’s increased investment in education from six to eight percent of GDP. He also described the work of the Arias Foundation on rising crime in Latin America, a major social issue, and on promoting disarmament in the region.