October

2016
Cape Town HUB

Sports and Surfing Program - Restarting after winter.

Objectives
Increase access to further opportunities for community members.



Summary
Our surfing program has restarted after the winter break so we have been back in the water with our grade 6 and 7 students, none of whom have spent any time in the water since May.

Report
The main goal of our surfing program is to offer a reward for participation and effort in class. With that in mind we dont
take students surfing during the winter as it is too cold and not enjoyable. So it was with great excitement that we restarted out surfing program this month, bringing our 11 students from ACJ Primary School back to the beach in Strand
and working again with our partners Son Surf School. The students were equally excited. At least two of them asked
about their surf sessions for the majority of the preceding week and all were ready to go as soon as we arrived to take
them. Seeing the enthusiasm to get back into the program, and that enthusiasm still in evidence two weeks later when
the novelty has started to wear off again, reinforces that the program meets its objective of rewarding students and
ensuring that they do something fun and purposeful at the same time.

Though understandably rusty having not seen a wave for the best part of 4 months all of the students have been improving rapidly. Last week one of the girls was too worried about falling into the water to let go of her board, which
more or less ensured that she fell in every time she tried to stand up. This week she was up and riding waves within 10
minutes of being in the water, and she was not alone in this. One student this week caught his first wave and immediately asked to go further out as the waves were too small. He and another boy ended up competing to see who could
catch the biggest wave, bantering across the water with each other throughout the session.







There is another benefit to all of this as well, and it doesnt only affect the students. The region holds surfing competitions each year, and they have a quota to work with. Son Surf and the other schools in the area struggle to reach young
people in the more disadvantaged areas, which more or less means that black and coloured young people are unlikely
to be surfers. Having the connection with ACJ means that our students not only get great training but also an opportunity to enter and do well in the competitions, which in turn leads to an opportunity to surf outside of the region in further
competitions. On a couple of occasions students from ACJ have been selected to compete for the region in Port Elizabeth, which means they get to see another area, another town, another beach. This opportunity is not one that is readily available to ACJ students, or to other young people from the Nomzamo area. So for the students this is a fantastic
opportunity to explore new boundaries and for the surf school and the surfing bodies of the region it is an opportunity
to work with students they would not otherwise see and to reach areas they might not otherwise have access to.