Lifestyle: Nurturing the ocean custodians of the future

World-renowned Big Wave surfer Frank Solomon founded Sentinel Ocean Alliance in Hout Bay in 2017 to create ocean-based opportunities and environmental education for the previouslydisadvantaged youth of his hometown. Since then the project has grown way beyond his expectations.

“We started with the Waves for Change program here in Hout Bay,” Solomon says, explaining how it started with a few kids, and now has multiple permanent employees, and a couple of hundred kids a week kids doing the program. The program has also evolved greatly and now includes the Parley Ocean School in partnership with the international organisation, Parley for the Oceans.

EARLY DAYS

“It was kind of around when ‘Let’s be Frank’ (a comedic biopic of his surfing career) came out and I wasn’t sure what the next step would be,” Solomon says. “I wanted to help somehow, I didn’t have a plan, I just had this idea that I needed to give back in some way and help get these kids the same opportunities I had – I had access to the ocean and I was able to learn become a lifesaver and learn how to surf. Through all these things I was able to make some kind of career out of it, out of the ocean and surfing, so I reached out to Waves for Change to set something up in Hout Bay.”

Solomon identified an overgrown location on the edge of Hout Bay beach that had a rusted old container frequented by loiterers. “I would go down every day and pick up the rubbish left behind. I would plant plants and people were looking at me thinking: ‘What is wrong with this guy, what are you doing?’ I went there just about every single day for about four years, doing that because I felt that if the place looked nice, people would respect it and then people would not go there to drink and just loiter. I wanted to change the scope of the place and make it cool - that’s pretty much how it started.” During these years, Solomon learned that it would take a lot more than just physical work to get a project of sorts off the ground.

With Waves For Change he recruited a surf coach from Hangberg and Imizamo Yethu and got a small group of kids that came every Saturday to learn ocean safety. The interest from the communities and the public grew exponentially through these Saturday morning sessions.

SAVING LIVES

There was more to do, though. “Before long we embarked on establishing the Hout Bay Life Saving Club,” said Solomon, chatting about the early development of the Sentinel Ocean Alliance.

With the help of a few additional stakeholders Solomon got a 12m container that we put next to our small container (he had renovated the original rusted unit), which became the

Waves For Change office), the other become surfboard storage and then they had space to start the Hout Bay Surf Lifesaving Club. “At the time the City of Cape Town was employing lifeguards out on Hout Bay beach throughout the year and you could earn an income of about R12 000 a month –– which is pretty good if you don’t have tertiary education! But there were no qualified lifeguards in Hout Bay, so they were bringing guys in from Durban and I thought, ‘that’s crazy, let’s start a lifesaving club and train some of the local guys so that they can earn a proper living.”

Aside from creating 10 sustainable job opportunities and growing the ocean awareness agenda, the club went on to win an award as the Best Development Club in the Western Cape. Fast forward three years and the Parley Ocean School would then be the third step in educating the youth on ocean-based opportunities and environmental education.

FULL NEW CURRICULUM

During this period Solomon set up the NGO called Sentinel Ocean Alliance because he still wasn’t quite sure how to get a proper formal lease from the government for the property he was using for the program. “We had the lifesaving club and Waves For Change, but I also wanted to have my own thing. I don’t want to go to The City of Cape town and say, “hey, I’m from Waves For Change, because that is its own entity based elsewhere in Cape Town and then I would just be another Waves For Change, you know, I would just be working for them, so I wanted to start my own non-profit.” Again Solomon had to learn all about the admin side of things (and frustrating red tape) aside from putting in the physical work, to make it all happen.

Through his connections in the surfing world, he got introduced to Parley. Parley Ocean School takes an immersive approach to environmental education to inspire marine conservation and empower its next generation of leaders, the ‘Ocean Guardians.’ Globally, Parley Ocean School youth programs simplify complex marine threats through engaging materials developed with a global network of educators. One thing led to another and the school was opened in Hout Bay in December 2020.

“Initially Parley didn’t have a curriculum,” Solomon says. “Parley provided us with a once-off conservation-based talk, but we soon realised that to truly create behaviour change, we would have to provide a more substantive and long-term programme curriculum.” Not long after this Solomon met Marguerite Hofmeyr through a mutual friend. Hofmeyr is a lawyer who had moved back to South Africa after a long stint in Australia and like Solomon wanted to ‘do something to help but wasn’t sure what.’ “She was actually looking to take kids diving and surfing, but I already had this school and she volunteered at the time.” From that small beginning, Hofmeyr helped turned what Solomon had started into something bigger and better. “She took it to the next level. I didn’t have the law background as she does in terms of paperwork and organisation.”

Not only did she bring structure, but she also crafted a whole new eight-week curriculum for the school. Hofmeyr is now the Director of Operations and runs the day-to-day on the ground with a permanent staff of some 11 members.

“So now the kids come for eight weeks and they have an in-depth ocean curriculum taught by Kholofelo Sethebe –– she is this amazing marine biologist –– and she goes through modules on marine plastic pollution, the ocean mammals, we do meditation, include mental health skills and life skills in our programme… It’s super well balanced,” Solomon says.

ONWARDS AND UPWARDS

“The school was going really well by then we realised that we are teaching the kids all this stuff but they don’t really know anything about the ‘water’ - they have no real connection with the ocean because they don’t go in the ocean. We just tell them about it and they have a great time and a meal (through our partner IY Community Cookup) and then they go home,” Solomon says, explaining how they realised the need for another arm of the project and the Turn the Tide Programme was born. “As soon as we taught them how to swim, they grew this love for the ocean out of sheer joy – ‘we now understand why we need to protect it’.”

With the inclusion of the Turn the Tide Programme, the full program is now 16 weeks long and Solomon and his team have their eyes set further than just those people graduating from his Ocean School and Turn The Tide Programmes. “There are a lot of opportunities in the ocean economy,” Solomon says. “If you’re not from an ocean environment, maybe from Hangberg or from a different township, you might not know how to access the ocean economy. The biggest hurdle we have found thus far is actually swimming. So the school is firstly teaching every kid to swim, to give them a possible entry into the ocean economy.”

In Solomon’s world, an ideal situation pans out something like this. A young kid, from a township, joins the Sentinel Ocean Alliance as a nipper, around five to seven years old. He or she learns to swim, develops a love for the ocean with the Sentinel Ocean Alliance, enters the Waves For Change program, learns to surf, and gains confidence in the ocean.

They could then become lifeguards, and get a job as a lifeguard anywhere in the world. At Waves For Change, they can become a surf instructor. This person could then go on to get classes at the Parley Ocean School to learn more about the ocean and the environment.