Living in Costa Rica & Making A Difference. Papagayo Gringos helping animals. Free video.
My name is Michael Simons and I’m a professional Realtor here in Playa Hermosa, Guanacaste, Costa Rica.
I’ve been a permanent resident of Costa Rica since 2003 and I am a certified licensed Realtor with the Costa Rican Guanacaste Association of Realtors.
Living in Costa Rica & Making A Difference Video.
Probably the one thing I’m most proud about is all the charitable work that we do here in Costa Rica. The first thing when I moved here, there were hundreds, maybe thousands of stray dogs everywhere, running on the beaches, running on the streets like most Latin American countries.
A group of gringos as they like to call us started a company called Coco CARE. It’s an organization that rescues and helps finds homes for all the animals.
In the last decade, they’ve helped to neuter and spayed and find homes for something like 4000 animals. So as you walk around the town now, you don’t see a bunch of stray dogs.
Sure, there’s a couple of local beach dogs, but trust me, they’re very well-fed and they’re sleeping somewhere at night. What has happened is over the last four, five years, many foreigners have moved to Costa Rica and they have a lot of time on their hands and they have a lot of extra money. So a lot of people are taking the time to start various charities that are helping the communities here in Costa Rica. We’re building new schools for the kids.
As a matter of fact, we just did a big backpack program where we buy backpacks for the children of poor families who can’t afford the school clothes, books, pencils, backpacks.
We find hundreds and hundreds of families backpacks. We help save the monkeys. We build these monkey bridges so the monkeys don’t have to use the electrical lines to cross over the road.
We’ve helped anti-shark-finning campaigns, save the turtles, save the whales, beach clean-ups. You name it and it has all started and founded and funded mostly by foreigners and then the Costa Ricans were able to jump onboard.
I think if you ask most Costa Ricans, at least the ones that I know here, they tell you they’ve been very glad that the gringos have come here because the majority of gringos are doing very, very good things within the community.
So what I would ask you is if you come to Costa Rica, enjoy the country. Enjoy the culture. Enjoy the people but don’t forget to give back.
Come on down baby!
Living in Costa Rica & Making A Difference. Papagayo Gringos helping animals. Free video.
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Andrew Makarik
to@welovecostarica.comAndrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.
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