Fort Lauderdale cements partnership with Quepos, Costa Rica

In a celebration of sisterhood, representatives from Fort Lauderdale feted representatives from Quepos, Costa Rica to mark the city’s ongoing relationship with the Costa Rican town over the weekend. As part of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Sister Cities International initiative, residents from Quespos, including Mayor Oscar Monge Maykall, toasted the new sister city relationship. The GFLSCI creates partnerships with multiple cities around the world to help foster economic and community development and opportunities for both cities to learn new strategies from each other, and also to develop opportunities for exchange students to travel between the two countries.

During the party at a private home of the Intracoastal, Manfred Arias, who works with the hotel La Mariposa in Costa Rica, expressed excitement about being connected to Fort Lauderdale.

PICTURED RIGHT: Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jack Seiler presents a plaque to Quepos Mayor Oscar Monge Maykall.

“We have an amazing relationship with Fort Lauderdale—it’s great because we have the ability to help both cities and have the opportunity to increase business,” said Arias. “We are here to try to make strong relationships with both cities and it helps us copy good ideas here.”

Mark McCormick, who opened his home for the event, with Maria Romero, James and Alessandra Jackson.

Mayor Maykall said he enjoys coming and learning better ways to manage his town. And despite a language barrier, he expressed his sentiments in both English and Spanish.

“Costa Rica is a beautiful country, but it is not as safe, and they have program here for national security, and every time I come, I learn lot things to put in my town, with tangible results,” he said. “We can peacefully co-exist and work to solve problems like climate change.

“Like in Obama’s (recent) speech, we are facing similar problems in Costa Rica such as the fight against hunger,” he said in a speech to the crowd at the party during a special presentation of plaques commemorating the sister relationship. “I enjoy your country’s hospitality and the solutions to help us fight all our problems.”

Maykall spoke about returning to a municipal police force, getting the beach cleaned up and getting rid of the drug dealers in his town, opening municipal park facilities and creating a new chamber.

“My biggest challenge is keeping with all the knowledge shared by Fort Lauderdale to…better my community,” he added through a translator. “It is just hard to express everything that is in my soul.”

Jack Seiler, the mayor of Fort Lauderdale, who is very involved and supportive of the sister cities program also spoke.

“The exchange of ideas, business, culture and education is so important as different regions come together,” he said.

GFLSCI has relationships with 17 countries around the world, and during the event, Annette and Karl Thor from

Annette and Karl Thor were visiting from Germany to explore a sister city relationship.

Duisberg, Germany were exploring the opportunities to become sister cities.

“We look forward to joining the sister cities program—we have the largest inner harbor in the world, so there are opportunities to learn,” said Annette Thor.

To learn more about the sister cities program and to get involved, visit www.gflsci.org.

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Posted by Andrea Freygang on Nov 3 2009. Filed under Broward County, Culture, Fort Lauderdale, Local news, Non-profit organizations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.