Happy Little Cottages By The Sea

Cottage Charm, Coastal Calm

Mermaids Give Back

1001 Ways To Get Tybee-ized:Socially Responsible Vacations

Socially-responsible Vacations

Mermaid Cottages actively supports local and charitable projects and we make it possible for you to get involved more directly, as well! Through our “Mermaids Give Back” program, we help match cottage renters with local volunteer programs (such as with the Sea Turtle Program through the Marine Science Center). Participating in various local projects alongside our Mermaids and Mermen allows our guests to not only experience authentic activities, but also gives them the chance to leave the island a better place.

Our special Honorary Mermaid and Contributor, Lisa Scarbrough, is the Online Community Manager for Paula Deen.  Here, Lisa  shares how you can make a difference this weekend and your participation will have a lasting impact for many years to come!

Doing Good for the Community with Just a Vote

By Lisa Scarbrough

If you know Paula, you know that she is a big animal lover. It was one of just the many things that made me so happy to come and work for her. Paula is a woman after my own heart, with her menagerie of birds, chickens, and dogs. If that isn’t enough, she even provided us with an office cat, Norma Jean, who sits in on some of our meetings and makes sure everyone stays in line.

For the last nine months, I have been mom to a beautiful baby boy. But for the 31 years before that, I was foster mom to hundreds of stray pets. About ten years ago, I started rescuing pets on my own, which led to me founding Coastal Pet Rescue here in Savannah on my 23rd birthday in 2003. I was ecstatic when Paula decided to adopt an orange tabby from me shortly after I joined her team.

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If you can imagine, running an all-volunteer non-profit can be rather taxing, and certainly not cheap. On top of veterinary expenses and providing for food, there’s a lot of travel involved, which means money for the gas and more miles on our main “puppymobile.” That’s why we look to grants and contests to help us with funding, and right now, we have a very big opportunity.

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The CPR “puppymobile” has various uses, such as rescuing a mom and her seven puppies from an animal control shelter where they would have otherwise been euthanized, collecting 127 pounds of pet fur to be stuffed in oil booms along the Gulf Coast (May 2010), and delivering supplies to an animal shelter in Rome, GA to feed animals displaced by tornadoes (April 2011).

On Sunday, May 29th, you can log on to the Toyota USA Facebook page and help Coastal Pet Rescue win a brand new Toyota SUV to help transport pets. Our current vehicle is over 11 years old and has over 187,000 miles on it. How wonderful would it be to be for us to save money on repairs and be assured that our transports will be safe for the pets and volunteers? Best of all, it doesn’t cost anymore than a couple minutes of your time.

Here’s how to vote:

1. On Sunday, May 29th (not before, not after), go to http://www.facebook.com/toyota

2. Like their page.

3. Click the “100 Cars for Good” link on the left.

4. Vote for Coastal Pet Rescue by clicking the box next to “Vote.”

5. Click the checkbox to confirm your vote, then click “confirm” again.

(Only one vote per Facebook account.)

Paula was kind enough to appear in our appeal video to help us win a finalist spot for this contest. Now we need your vote to make our dream a reality.

Watch as Lisa and Paula share their pet passion: Coastal Pet Rescue:Toyota 100 Cars For Good.
Read More From Lisa Scarbrough.

 

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Cottage Cheese: ADOPT A HIGHWAY and BEACH SWEEP!

Show the love and learn how your Mermaid Cottages staycation can help you Give Back!  ADOPT A HIGHWAY! BEACH SWEEP!

The Tybee Beautification Association invites you to join our next ADOPT A HIGHWAY on

Saturday, May 14, 2011.

Volunteers meet at 8 A.M. at the Tybee Island sign on Highway 80 for trash bags and instructions!

The BEACH SWEEP will start at 10 A.M. from the North Beach Parking lot.

For more information about ways you can make a difference during your vacation give us a call

at 912 313 0784  or contact Diane@mermaidcottages.com!

 

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Live Like a Local: Mermaids Give Back

     It’s that time again! We are planning to be at Tybee’s Oceanside Nursing home for another Mermaids Give Back event, and we’d love to see you there. Spring has sprung here on our lovely island, and Easter is right around the corner. Come join all the mermaids and mer-men as we make paper-mâché eggs with the residents at Oceanside. We want to celebrate everything wonderful about Spring and bring a smile to some very special people while we’re at it!

     If you’d like to join us, we’d love to have you! We will be at Oceanside Nursing Home (located at 77 Van Horne Street) today, March 23rd, at 3:15 p.m. and also Thursday and Friday, March 24th and 25th, at 2:15 and 2:30 p.m. respectively. Please plan to join us! For more information, please call 912.658.1550 or email diane@mermaidcottages.com. All you need to bring is yourself, a smile, some old newspapers, and maybe a friend or two! If you can’t make it today, please feel free to join us on one or both of the other two days. We hope to see you there to help us celebrate Spring and get the Easter season hopping (sorry, I had to!) as Mermaids Give Back to the Tybee community!

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