Surf Life. Not Street Life
Vimeo Staff Pick winner - Check out the full journey from the warm waves of South Africa to the icy chills of Northern Scotland. Created by Jamie Hancock Produced by Rich Philip.
Rollback 20 years and the pristine beaches of South Africa, were preserved exclusively for white South Africans.
Just take that in for a second.
1,600 miles of beautiful beaches stretching from the rugged Atlantic coastline, to the lush dunes of the the Indian Ocean. All off-limits if you were a black South African.
I found this out whilst spending time with Tom Hewitt MBE, the founder of Surfers Not Street Children. It was only in June 1990, that South Africa’s Separate Amenities Act came to an end and the formal desegregation of South Africa’s beaches officially opened up the public spaces and coastline to all.
For those of you that know me personally, you’ll have experienced my passion and enthusiasm for everything outdoors. I spent most of the 80s roaming beaches, eating surf wax, exploring and finding the boundaries of my newfound freedom as a child. So to hear that beach apartheid and this level of segregation was in place and being experienced by kids that would have been the same age as me was shocking and hit me hard.
I was first introduced to Tom and the Surfers Not Street Children programme five years ago and as an organisation, we have supported them ever since. The charity was originally a maverick crew of social workers, carers and activists scouting the streets of downtown Durban. Since then, they have gone on to support and mentor over 3000 street children across three core programmes, one in Durban, Mozambique and a dedicated girls programme called ‘Girls Surf too’.
Driven by one of my favourite quotes 'you can’t be what you can’t see’ by the famous American Activist for children's rights, Mariann Wright Edelman, We wanted to inspire the children on the programme to believe that they were equal and capable of surfing waves in the most unimaginable places.
“As much as we are physically different, we’re the same in the water”
Almost all the children in the programme have never travelled beyond their local townships or small villages in which they live. These were the children we wanted to inspire, so in the midst of storm Barra which was pummelling the UK, we invited Tom and three of the programme ambassadors out to the UK for a cold water surf trip that would push their boundaries well beyond the shorelines of South Africa. The goal of the trip was to surf the world-famous, Thurso East, the most northern surf break in the United Kingdom and offer the ambassadors an experience that would not only last them a lifetime but also inspire thousands of street children back home to believe that they can transition from street life, to surf life.
It was an honour to spend time with the crew, hear about their stories of life in South Africa and Mozambique and also pull together a film that will hopefully inspire the surfers of tomorrow.
