The Monkey Farm - a farm of HOPE in Costa Rica
Invest in the Miracles Happening at the Farm of HOPE in Playa Ocotal, GuanacasteWelcome to the Farm of Hope
No matter if you like to help children with disabilities, youth or adults with trauma, the homeless, orphaned wildlife, farm animals and horses, or organic gardening, we have the niche for you to get involved with! Please come and meet us, play with our baby animals, see the wildlife, learn about aquaponics, and see what we are doing!
The Monkey Farm is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization registered in the United States, ID #81-1664389, and also a registered NGO in Costa Rica. All donations are tax deductible.
How You Can Help Give Hope – Click Here to See our Needs
Who We Are
Nestled in a quiet jungle valley near the Northern Pacific coast of Playa Ocotal, Costa Rica, there is a rustic farm that serves as a peaceful sanctuary providing Hope for both man and animals. Run by North Americans and locals, this idylic farm serves to offer Hope to people and animals in various different forms. We are surrounded by God’s creations; trees, hills, the ocean; we have horses, goats, chickens, fish and much more. We are growing our own food, collecting eggs, milking our goats and cows and making cheese and yogurt. It is a simple, uncomplicated lifestyle, and very therapeutic for humans and animals struggling with trauma and other life issues. Be our Hero and learn how you can make a major, lasting investment in the eternal lives of people and and animals who need hope to change their lives. Please join us and become part of our hope-building team.
If you would like to read our history and how we got started and evolved click here.
What we do
With Your Help, We Give Life-Changing Hope to Humans and Animals Together. See below to read about all our free community services.
Why we do it
Because giving Hope to one person won’t change the world, but it will change the world for that one person.
How we do it
We give Hope through many different life-changing Free Community Services, while promoting self-sufficiency and sustainablility among God’s creations.
Our Many FREE Community Services
Residential Trauma, Complex PTSD and Addiction Recovery for Men
We believe that addiction is not the root problem; addiction is a symptom of unhealed trauma and complex PTSD. We focus 100% on healing that pain and trauma with our faith-based residential program. We give 2 1/2 hours of daily classes every afternoon teaching the men how to identify, process and heal their trauma and seek God. The results have been miraculous! Our program lasts 13 months because it takes a long time to learn the tools to heal a lifetime of trauma and emotional pain.
We are the only Free residential trauma and addiction recovery center in the World that is using Natural Horsemanship horse training classes as an important and major part of our therapy. Through the training process, the men and the horses rehabilitate one another.
What they learn from the horses is courage, patience, respect, love, discipline, caring, commitment, and trust. They must also learn to control their emotions and face their fears. Horses mirror the emotions of the person they are interacting with. The men learn to set daily goals, face challenges, get a sense of accomplishment and take pride in a job well done, which builds self-confidence and self-esteem, which is lacking when they arrive at our farm. This also produces in them a valuable skill that they can use later to earn a living. We only use Natural Horsemanship Training methods.
In addition to this we use equine therapy for PTSD and trauma related emotional and mental health problems such as depression. Many of our men in therapy have come to us directly after being discharged from the hospital for a suicide attempt. They are referred to us while in the hospital by the government addiction recovery organization, I.A.F.A. 89% of our men have had suicidal thoughts before coming to us, saying they had no hope for a better life.
Our recovery program has not yet been officially certified by the government, but when we get it, the government certification will give us many benefits. A BIG one is that there is a law in Costa Rica that when police confiscate property, cars or money from drug traffickers, they are required to donate what was confiscated to a certified addiction recovery center. There are very few certified recovery centers in the country.
What is preventing us from being certified is that we have to demonstrate financial stability for one year out. What is supporting us now, are horse tours and farm tours. But since the pandemic closed the borders and airports, we had no tourists here for 11 months and they very slowly trickled in after that. That is why we cannot count tourism as reliable, stable income. BUT, what we CAN count on is monthly automated donations to prove our financial stability. If you would like to help us get certified with an automated monthly donation of any amount, Click the box to make a monthly donation.
Many ask the name of the trauma recovery program that we use. It is out of Canada and called Finding Freedom. This intensive program, dealing with complex trauma and emotional pain, is taught six days a week for 2 1/2 hours per day.
Monkey and Wildlife Rescue and Injury Prevention
Our original intention was only to create a rescue center model that is self-sufficient in every way. We were only about monkeys and farming, so that’s how we got our original name, “The Monkey Farm”.
We also build and place monkey bridges to keep monkeys from going on electrical lines where they can be electrocuted. Below are photos of our men in recovery building monkey bridges and some of the monkeys we have rescued.
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- Bella arrived horribly burned
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- Wildlife Rescue The Monkey Farm in Costa Rica
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- Monkey Rescue
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- Bottle feeding goat milk
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- Bottle feeding baby monkeys
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- Bottle feeding goat milk
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- Feeding a baby
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- What a ham!
Equine Therapy for Children with Disabilities such as Autism, Cerebral Palsy and Down Syndrome
In the dry season, we give Free Equine therapy every Saturday to local children with handicaps and challenges such as cerebral palsy, autism and Downs syndrome. We have seen unbelievable results with these children and could tell you stories all day long! Click here to see a video: Moises, 4 years old, cerebral palsy
Maria 9 years old, cerebral palsy
Fabian, 8 years old, Down Syndrome
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- “Silver”
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- First time Moises met Silver
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- His favorite day of the week
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- Moises has the greatest smile!
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- What concentration!
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- His favorite day of the week!
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- Fabian’s Dad, leading Silver
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- Dad showing him what to do
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- Look at the joy on his face!
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- Ducking under the arch
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- Taking “eggs” out of the bucket
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- He made the basket! Yay!
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- Ethan saying his colors.
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- Putting the ring on Jon
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- Fabian loves Silver!
Teaching "Interactive" English to Adults
We have integrated our English students into sections of our farm and horse tours so that they can get real-world English practice and get over their fears and intimidation. They are taught a phase of vocabulary for the tours and when they learn that section, they get to interact with our visitors in that section. As they learn more and more, they are given more chances to interact with our visitors. This motivates them to study, practice and learn more.
We are currently looking for volunteers to come and teach our men in recovery here at the farm, one evening a week. It should be around 6:30ish for about an hour to an hour and a half, your call. We can provide the lessons or you can bring or invent your own. Contact us if interested.
Click to see Eduardo Practicing English
Job Skill Training and Resume Development
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- Vicki Conley and The Monkey Farm volunteers helping to build a new home
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- Rafael Angel, first pipian squash from his garden
Farm Animal Rescue
We have adopted countless orphaned, injured or homeless farm animals from horses, sheep, pigs, goats, rabbits, chickens and many more. Some have to be bottle fed around the clock.
Feeding the Homeless
We provide hot nutritious meat and vegetable stew to the homeless and hopeless every Tuesday night at 7:15 in Playas del Coco, rain or shine. Our men in recovery share an encouraging message of Hope that they too can get out of the vicious cycle of addiction and living on the streets.
Beach and Road Clean-up and Road Repairs
Our men in recovery have spent the majority of their lives in “survival” mode, just trying to keep alive. As they heal, we teach them to give back, by doing beach and roadside clean-ups and repairs to local roads. This helps them to start focusing outside of themselves to see and help the needs of others.
Providing Homes for the Homeless
We provide long-term homes in a loving family-style atmosphere where many can experience love, acceptance and belonging for the first time in their lives
Self-Sufficiency and Sustainability
Vicki, the founder of our project, is from Los Angeles, land of earthquakes, so she grew up with them. But she experienced the biggest earthquake of her life right here on this farm in 2012. It was a 7.6 on the Richter scale. It made her realize how vulnerable and unprepared she was for a natural disaster in a country that does not have the resources to swoop in and fix everything immediately if that happened.
When she and other volunteers started talking about rescuing monkeys and bringing in international volunteers to help, her one stipulation was that we always be working towards self-sufficiency like growing our own food and food for the animals and rain water collection and things like that, so that if a big natural disaster happened like an earthquake or a tsunami or a hurricane, we would be able to take care of ourselves and our animals.
Aquaponics
We created an Intergrative aquaponics system to grow both fish, fruit, vegetables and herbs using 95% less water than conventional farming.
Dairy Goats and Cows
We milk our own goats and cows to make cheese, yogurt, greek yogurt, sourcream, kefir and ice cream. We also use the milk to bottle feed our orphaned or rescued mammals. Goat’s milk is the nearest thing to monkey milk and easily digestible.
Poultry and Eggs
We raise our own chickens, turkeys, ducks and eggs.
Bees and Honey Production
We have our own stingless mariola bees producing a high-quality medicinal honey. We use it for eye infections, burns and cuts on ourselves and our animals. We also love to eat it as it has a delicious smokey flavor. See our Bees
Medicinal Pharmacy
We grow an amazing amount of medicinal plants with many health benefits, both in our aquaponics and in our square foot gardens and other areas of the farm.
Square Foot Gardens
Although we have a lot of land here, we use Square Foot gardens to show our visitors that they can grow a lot of food in a very small amount of space and even on concrete.
Rain Water Collection
We have several different areas where we are collecting rain water to use for both our animals and our many plants.
Organic Compost
We collect all of our old hay, fallen leaves and manure and put it in our chickens yard. They happily dig through it all day looking for worms and grubs. In doing this, they are turning our compost for us. We then use this in our gardens and around our trees.
Give Hope one life at a time... Donate Today
The Monkey Farm in Costa Rica is a non-profit 501(c)(3), ID #81-1664389, and also a registered NGO in Costa Rica that combines trauma and addiction recovery and free community services with organic farming and permaculture activities. We need YOU to help us give Hope.