By Sophia Chiang, Swimming World College Intern
In 2010, Neil Christiansen packed up his life in San Diego and decided to move to a slice of remote Panama to found his own non-profit organization known as Give & Surf to educate and develop a local communities in the Bocas del Toro province.
Five years down the road, Christiansen can say he’s done just that. Give & Surf is a successful 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that now serves a population of five hundred Ngobe community members living in the communities of Bahia Roja, Bahia Honda, and Solarte. These Ngobe communities still live without electricity, running water, clean drinking water, or bathroom facilities, but Give & Surf has been able to provide education to over a hundred children of the community ages three to sixteen. They now run a preschool, a kindergarten, a surf outreach mentorship program, an after school program, adult and elementary school English programs, a music program, and various community development initiatives. Recently, they opened a new community center. And, for the people at Give & Surf, that’s just the tip of the iceberg for what they hope to achieve.
Give & Surf operates in the Bocas del Toro region of Panama, on the beautiful Caribbean Sea. Palm trees, clear water, beautiful beaches, and nice weather come with the territory. The Ngobe people depend on the Caribbean for their livelihoods and to access the outside world. But dependency on the ocean can be a dangerous thing, especially for the Ngobe, who have no swim training. They put themselves at especially high risk because they paddle in dugout canoes, as they are unable to afford motorized boats. Horror stories, such as fathers falling out of their canoes in perfectly calm water and drowning, or sons and daughters who fall off docks and are never seen again, are a common reoccurrence in these communities.
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