Safe Spaces | Waves For Change

It was obvious that the game changer was Apish. He knew the community, knew the culture and was respected in his community. The kids flooded to Apish as he became Masi’s first surf mentor. My role, and indeed the role of Waves for Change today, was to train Apish with the soft skills he needed to work with children experiencing mental health challenges.

Each week I’d ask the surfers ‘why do you come’. Most of the replies were as I expected. ‘It’s fun’, ‘It’s new’, ‘It’s exciting’. But the answer I wasn’t expecting, and the one answer I got from every single surfer, was this ‘We get to talk to people who listen to us’. The more I came to understand South Africa, the more it became apparent that young people here live exceptionally stressful lives. And there are no outlets. The statistics are mind-boggling. Estimates in Cape Town are that 1/3 of young people are living with a mental health challenge. Primary health services for mental health conditions such as anxiety or depression are almost non-existent and certainly out of reach of the most vulnerable in a land of private health care and under-resourced government clinics and hospitals. There is one social worker to every twenty thousand young people.

And yet here at the beach we were establishing a simple dynamic. A safe space where we could have fun, get to know one and other and share our problems. Safe spaces being created by people like Apish - influential figures in their communities who could navigate the cultural and social challenges to which I was ignorant. And under the leadership of these surf mentors, we were in a small way overcoming the legacy of beach apartheid. Overcoming some of the challenges of overstretched primary health care services. We were connecting communities with the ocean. We were giving people access to spaces to share, to be heard. We knew it was therapeutic in a way, but didn’t dare name it. We weren’t clinicians. But we pressed on regardless.

Today, Waves for Change trains and supports 65 Surf Mentors across South Africa and Liberia. They connect 1,700 children to the water every week. They combine surfing with games and activities we’ve designed with psychologists, proven to help young people cope with stress. And we’ve partnered with research organisations to establish that yes, this is therapeutic, and that the term 'Surf Therapy' isn’t a stretch. We can use it with confidence. We are also sharing our method with more and more organisations around the world. Far from keeping our method behind lock and key, we are open sourcing it with ocean-side organisations who want to connect their communities with the healing power of the Ocean. Called ‘The Wave Alliance’, it’s an incubator for start-up Surf Therapy projects. We’ve helped 11 organisations in countries such as Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Trinidad launch programmes. By the end of this year that number will be just over 20. It’s a movement we hope to sustain as long as we can and is proudly supported by Comic Relief and the Swedish Postcode Lotto.

It’s been a privilege sharing our journey with Finisterre and their community over the past weeks. We’re looking forward to sharing more stories from the beaches over the coming months and years.

Our vision is an ocean for everyone. We’re stoked to be getting more and more communities connected to the ocean, under the leadership of more and more local champions, like Apish.

At first we were few. Just a handful of surfers. Today, the surfing community in Masiphumelele is over 250. There’s been a big change. We used to think surfing was for white people. But in Masi, we know that surfing is for everyone. And at Muizenberg, where we surf, we are welcome by everyone. We’ve met so many new people and our community is growing and growing.

Some of those children that surfed with me back in 2008 and now the coaches of today. It’s them who are running the sessions, creating the safe space for the next generation. My role is to train them. For the surfers that have come through the programmes with us, many are now lifeguards and work on the beaches in summer. We never had lifeguards from Masiphumelele. Now we have many. Some work in surf schools at Muizenberg beach even. Surfing is making our community wider. And in Masi, we have the teachers, the parents and the social workers asking to refer children into Waves for Change. Even some of the local hospitals and schools for children with Autism are now referring children to our beach programmes. They have seen the difference. I am even on the youth council for Masiphumelele today as the community leaders are seeing the changes we are making and two weeks ago was invited to the opening of the Western Cape Parliament by our Premier. It’s a great honour.

Our youth are powerful. They just need a platform to express themselves. We know the solutions to the problems we face. We just need the training and support to face and overcome them. This is what we are doing at Waves for Change. We invest in our youth, in our communities as we believe in them.

It’s been great to see the changing attitudes towards the ocean and experience the change that Surfing has brought to my community. With Waves for Change and the Wave Alliance we’re bringing change to more and more coastlines every year. It’s inspiring to see a movement growing and to know it started in Masiphumelele: ‘We will succeed’ in Xhosa.

I’d like to thank Finisterre and everyone who came to the events last week. Meeting everyone, knowing we all share the same feelings about the ocean, we are connected in so many ways.