No doubt - Surfing is one of the greatest “Fun Sports” on Earth!
More and more teachers around the world start to use “surfing” not only to get kids involved in sports, but also to teach them how to become responsible stewards of our oceans!
We found one of those dedicated teachers, Israel Neri from Sao Francisco School in Praia Do Forte, Brazil. Israel teams up with surf-crazed scientists from the local Humpback Whale Institute.
Israel and his partners take students out into the waves to learn surfing, but also to teach them about the “life beneath the waves”. Israel thereby “creates” a new way of life for the kids of his village! He provides them with new insights into the wonders of their own environment - and that with to have a lot of fun!
Inspired by the “CRIEAÇÂO” project Amakua Video will visit Kauai in 2008 to create with Save Our Seas a similar “Hawaii Wave Rider Kids Adventure”.
Similar to Israel’s “CRIEAÇÂO” project in Brazil “Save Our Seas” director Paul Clark plans to organize a surf contest that will not be only about “who is catching the best wave”, but also entail a short quiz and brief presentation by the students about “how to save our seas”. The kids are engaged to learn something about their environment and later proof their knowledge in front of their peers.
For the “Hawaii Wave Rider Kids Adventure” Paul Clark envisions a student presentation, e.g. about a marine creature that the students recently have encountered during their monthly reef check, or how waves form at their favorite surf spot. It further should include some activity to preserve, restore and protect our environment (e.g., picking up trash at the beach). Each member of the best team (two or three students per team) will win a new “Save Our Seas” Surf Rash Guard, donated by Geckoline-USA.
This type of competition is based on Amakua Video’s positive experience with the Hawaii Underwater Robotic Challenge (HURC) where high school and college teams across North America build underwater vehicles (ROV’s) to compete against each other. Part of the “ROV Mission” (normally at a high school or university pool) is to prevent some “man-made nature-threatening disaster” - to raise the awareness among the students to be careful and to take care of their environment.
Our ultimate goal is that one of our teams competes with the “CRIEAÇÂO Team” from Bahia, but also enjoy their companionship along the way!
Make sure to visit this site again and find out about how our “Hawaii Wave Rider Kids Adventure” will grow over time! At some point we may even have on board “Miss Hawaii 2005″ (see: picture below), young Super Surf Talent Will Hunt (see: picture above), and Pake Salmon!
Click here to watch the “Mission Statement” of “CRIEAÇÂO”.
— Thomas
December 5th, 2007 at 6:22 am
[...] familiar? We wrote about this concept a while ago: Our fun-loving friends from Brazil do exactly that with a project called [...]