Pics from the 2nd Annual Surf Liberia Contest

On October 24, a group of local and expatriate surfers gathered under the cotton tree at the Robertsport Community Campsite to convene the 2nd Annual Surf Liberia Contest. T-shirts were passed out and surfers registered, but where were the waves?

We waited until low tide then made the call for Shipwrecks, carried over chairs from Nana's Lodge and set up under an almond tree. We had 12 local surfers and 7 expats, including a few beginners and very new local beginners. You know you've succeeded in targeting youth when one of the contestants signs his name, "Baby Boy."

The contest lasted a little over three hours, with judging done by local and expat surfers as well as the visiting Surf Resource Network crew. We had over a hundred spectators, including Robertsport locals and weekenders, some UNMIL visitors, and even half of the Mama Liberia Sewing Co-op! The waves were a bit onshore, shoulder to head-high with some overhead sets on the drop quickly turning to mushy faces.

Of course, when it came time for the women's heat right before the finals, the swell surged to overhead plus and I got smoked--along with the relative and extremely brave newbie I'd cajoled into surfing with me. Better luck for the women's division next year!

Thanks to Robertsport Community Works partners Soul Surfers Foundation, Seren Clothing and Surf Resource Network. Thanks to our Surf Liberia contest event sponsors Nana's Lodge, Liberia Travel and Life Magazine, and Miss Boss Lady Entertainment. We value your support!

Here are some photos, courtesy of Surf Resource Network's Sean Brody, of the contest:

Alfred Lomax finishes a heat. Alfred is currently on scholarship courtesy of the Ministry of Youth and Sports and attending high school in Monrovia.

Alfred does a cut-back at Shipwrecks.
Alfred wins the contest and is chaired to the beach by fellow surfers. This is my favorite contest shot.
Alfred, 1st place in this year's Surf Liberia Contest, with a wooden plaque hand-carved in Robertsport.

Peter Swen, a university student in Monrovia, pulls into a little barrel before giving Alfred a run for his money and winning 2nd place.
Armstrong shows some local style on his newly-donated board.
Philip has gotten a lot better this year, thanks in part to a surfboard of his own donated by the Soul Surfers Foundation. Thank you!
Sam Brown Jr. looks remarkably like his father, Sam Brown, a member of our Community Board and an invaluable member of Robertsport Community Works. His board was donated by Surf Resource Network. Thank you!
For a full budget overview of Surf Liberia and the surf contest, check out the monthly budget reports on our Robertsport Community Works blog.

See you in the water next year!

2nd Surf Liberia Contest next weekend!

I've been spending today getting all the details ready for next weekend's 2nd Annual Surf Liberia contest. Learn more here if you think you can make it. Email me if you plan to compete!

Here are the details:

The contest will run on the morning of Saturday, 23 October if the waves are good. If not, it will be postponed until the afternoon, or even Sunday morning or afternoon. Once we begin, the contest will take about three hours.

We have three partners supporting us this year: Soul Surfers Foundation, Seren Clothing and the Surf Resource Network. Soul Surfers sponsors our Surf Liberia mentoring program in the Uptown community, the Surf Resource Network is helping us run the contest and the boys at Seren Clothing (both of whom I went to school with in Cairo) did the t-shirt.

Solomon thinks its really cool. I agree. He's helping us have a first run-off of 60 made for next Saturday. We'll put them on The African T-Shirt Company, which will also see some new energy in the next few months...

We'll have live commentary, prizes for 1st to 4th place, and it's the best place to see all the local surfers side by side, representing Liberia. Nana's Lodge and Miss Boss Lady Entertainment are the lead Liberian sponsors, contributing to the Surf Liberia Mentoring Project and lending us a hand with the organizing.

Hope to see you at the contest!

Surf Liberia becomes a mentorship program

When we started our Surf Liberia Scholarship program over a year ago, our idea was to offer an alternative vehicle for sponsoring surfers that didn't involve throwing them cash and encouraging a consumer-based lifestyle.

We wanted surfing to be a positive force for change for themselves and their community--to grow leaders through surfing. So we paid their school fees instead.

Fast-forward one year. Nevermind we may not be the *only* people paying their school fees (gasp!). When we asked two surfers what they wanted to do with their sponsorship money, they said they wanted to buy clothes. They thought about it and that's what they came up with. I'm not saying they shouldn't buy clothes, but not with Surf Liberia money. So what good is this money doing?

Nate works professionally at a variety of educational initiatives and projects involving young people and we know we want to impact the local surfers in a way that helps them realize personal and professional goals, whatever they might be. So we're revisioning our Surf Liberia project--which has raised almost $500 in t-shirt sales to date--to be more mentoring oriented and less about just giving young surfers money and equipment. We'll still do that, but we'll have better boundaries and parameters about what we will and will not support.

For example, seed money to start a business, cool. Money to go clothes shopping in Monrovia, probably not. Thanks to Soul Surfers Foundation for their support for Robertsport Community Works and this project: Alfonzo and Phillip are holding donated surfboards above (this photo, btw, was taken in May). They're the ones who aren't getting the clothes, but they have new surfboards. I think they'll get over it.

All about beach cleanup

We're well on our way with three major projects now and have been working officially with the Robertsport Community for six months. Over the next couple of weeks, I want to share each of these projects with you in-depth--how we started them, how we mobilize support for them and how we keep them going. If someone wants to do something similar, maybe they'll get some ideas. If anyone wants more details, let me know.

So, beach cleanup. The idea for this started on Nate and my first weekend in Robertsport in May 2009, right after we moved. We'd both visited before to do a recce, but hadn't really noticed the trash. That weekend, there were single-use plastic bags and marine debris all over the beach. That, and a 3-meter pit where someone had sand mined illegally and dug right under our neighbor's cotton tree, so deep that the roots were showing. Here we are with Trinity Dental Clinic dentist Keith Chapman after picking up the trash people were throwing in it. (Photo courtesy of Adam Weiner.)
All good projects need partners, so the first thing we did was see if Musa, the owner of next door Nana's Lodge, would be interested in partnering with us. Lucky for us, he was--and Nana's Lodge remains the lead partner of the Community Beach Cleanup. Every month, they pay for volunteers to share a meal together at the campsite. Then, they load our rice bags filled with plastic into their pickup and take it to the town dump. A big thank-you to Nana's Lodge for supporting this project.

Here's a photo (courtesy of Myles Estey) of our first cleanup, when we picked up almost 500 pounds of trash.
Since then, we've come a long way. We've handed over the project entirely to local leadership, which is sustainable and very exciting. First, we had the local surfers running it. That went well, but then local leader Abraham (aka A.B.) Fanbulleh came forward and really wanted to volunteer, so he's the project leader now. Here are the surfers with surfer and photographer Sean Brody, who took the rest of the photos below during our September clean-up.

We've had numerous people tell A.B. that they'd like to be paid for their work, and each time he brings this up (he brings this up a lot) we remind him that volunteering is...volunteering. And we reward participation with a small meal, cooked by Miriama and her friends. And if you participate for five months, you get a blue Clean the Beach shirt. And if you participate for 10 months, which will take us into the rainy season, you get a RCW raincoat (these will be stylin'). And, we tell him, we recruit for all of our microenterprise projects from the group of volunteers. I expect he'll keep bringing it up, though.

Over the six month beach cleanup has been running, we've had things become a little more informal--now on the first Saturday morning of each month, you just show up with your friends, grab gloves and a rice bag, and walk towards Locos. You come back to eat when your bag is pretty much filled or you score big, like a car bumper we'll be carrying back that washed up right at the Locos point. A.B. writes you name down as you eat, you hand your gloves bag, we count the bags and carry them to Nana's, where they load them with the weekend's garbage and take them to the dump. They bring the rice bags back and we use them again the next month.

Of course, where the trash goes is another story (hint: it's not great) and the focus of a future recycling project. Wonderfully, it's the community who pointed out that something needs to be done with the plastic in the landfill--and the community who notice now when day-trippers leave plastic plates and soda cans all over the beach. They don't just notice--they take a wheelbarrow and pick it up.

Now, it looks like the Monrovia-based surfer we sponsor, Peter Swen, is going to organize his own neighborhood cleanup at ELWA. We're lending him rice bags and gloves and helping him raise money to provide a thank-you meal for the volunteers. (Nice one, Peter.)

Thanks again to Musa at Nana's Lodge, to our anonymous donors who paid for gloves and rice bags and to all our volunteers.

Robertsport Community Works announces a partnership with Soul Surfers Foundation

Robertsport Community Works is proud to announce a partnership with Soul Surfers Foundation, a Dutch non-profit that supports surfing-oriented development and humanitarian work. We've been selected as their featured project for 2010 and will be working closely with them to develop projects that support conservation, water safety and help promote local surfing in Robertsport. They're also coming to visit us in February, which I look forward to writing about.

In 2009, Soul Surfers gave us a grant of 1000 euros to support our nascent water safety program, bolster Surf Liberia's efforts to mentor and support local surfers, and to help make our monthly Community Beach Cleanup sustainable. We're in the process of receiving this money and will be sharing with you how we intend to put it to good use.

Thank you, Soul Surfers!