Empowering South African girls through surfing

Waves for Change (W4C) is a sport for development organisation that uses surfing and mentoring to promote the wellbeing of local children from disadvantaged communities. The organisation was founded in 2011 with 15 children and two coaches and has since grown to 250 children per week and 18 coaches across three sites.

Due to the legacy of apartheid most of these communities have a severe lack of essential services. High levels of HIV infection, poverty, neglect, violence and abuse mean that children are repeatedly exposed to traumatic events. Research shows that repeat exposure to these, also referred to as 'Adverse Childhood Events' (ACEs), is linked to psychological and behavioural challenges which lead to school drop-out, substance abuse and antisocial or violent behaviour.

A mediating factor however is the presence of a consistent caring adult. Due to a high rate of child-headed households, displaced families, drug abuse, and incarceration many South African youths lack being in the care of a consistent adult. Ideally, social workers should fill this gap but in South Africa this is not the case. Currently the service ratio is 38 schools to every school social worker (almost 30 000 kids per social worker). Waves for Change (W4C) tries to address this need by employing and training local young adults to mentor these high-risk children, who tended to be mostly boys.

In 2016, W4C decided to focus on girl participation. Last year, they learnt that girls felt scared to walk to the beach and also nervous to surf with the boys. W4C listened to their voices and implemented changes to the programme:

1. To ensure safe access to the program, the organisation now uses bicycles donated by Global Bike through Beyond Sport and coaches now accompany the girls to the beach site.
2. Girl-only sessions have been introduced at two of their sites.

This has resulted in female attendance growing from 13% to 30%.

Focus groups, interviews and art sessions with the girls show that they attend because they need “somewhere safe to be after school”, that surfing makes them feel “brave, calm and loved”, they “belong somewhere important” and that surfing makes them “stronger on the outside and the inside”, which might be why “boys beat me up less”.

[This article has been edited by the Operating Team]