Learning life skills at Surfrider Spirit Sessions

By Chelsea Yamase

It’s a Saturday morning in Waikiki, and 20 girls in long-sleeve blue rash guards hop around restlessly. The air smells of construction, salt and pancakes from the diner across the street. But no one is looking at the construction. Or at the diner. All eyes are turned towards the white waves rolling in from the horizon.

Some girls grin, braces showing. Others look unsure. For a few, it will be their first time in the ocean in years.

“Eh, girly you know how to swim, yeah?” the big Hawaiian instructor known as Uncle Sam asks one of the participants. The young girl’s pierced lip and dyed hair are at odds with her shy demeanor.

“No,” she mumbles softly looking at the ground. She’s afraid she doesn’t remember how.

Three hours later, the girl stands back on the beach, hair salty and jean shorts still damp from just getting out of the water.

“I was scared at first, but I tried it again and I liked it,” she says almost hesitantly. Then she giggles and starts to smile. “It felt like I was flying.”

That little change is what Surfrider Spirit Sessions founder Cynthia Derosier strives for.

“We are ‘emancipating the minds’, making them believe they can do things they never thought they could do,” says Derosier.

Approximately 8,000 minors in Hawaii are on probation, under supervision or in custody. But in Hawaii’s justice system, Surfrider Spirit Sessions is giving a choice to teens that adjudicated youth in the rest of the nation do not have: to go surfing.

As a community-based non-profit organization, Surfrider Spirit Sessions (SSS) teaches youth in Hawaii’s justice system life lessons and positive social skills through surfing and other ocean activities. Many of the kids initially express skepticism about surfing or even swimming. As the weeks go by and their surfing abilities improve, Spirit Sessions asks them, “If you can do this, what else can you achieve that you didn’t think was possible?”

Building a strong community

At the start of the eight-week program, the staff match each teen with a mentor who becomes their designated “surf buddy” and, program directors hope, a listener and friend. Mentors are volunteers from the community who come from all backgrounds. Among this session’s nearly 40 mentors are a school psychologist, an economist for NOAA, a general contractor and graphic designer. Spirit Sessions likes to keep this ratio of one or more mentors to one mentee to create an environment where there are more functional people than dysfunctional. This network of healthy relationships increases the sense of belonging and encourages the teens to learn pro-social behaviors.

“Me and my mentor, we really connected,” says Sean (last name will be withheld for privacy purposes), who went through the program last session. “It’s someone to talk to, someone to be with, someone to talk about your problems.”

The Sessions

In order to be ready for the morning session (girls start at 8 a.m.) the staff begins packing boards into the van before the sun rises. Volunteers commit to four to five hours every Saturday, but the staff often stays on the beach upwards of 12 or 13 hours. Derosier, now the executive director, along with Program and Development Coordinator Scott Naguwa still surf both sessions every Saturday, filling in if there aren’t enough mentors, lecture and host “talk story” sessions after surfing. Despite this, Program Manager Sam Rodrigues (known to most of the kids as Uncle Sam or Santa Sam due to his round belly and white beard) still thinks the easiest part is Saturday.

“The hard part is getting people to give up their time to be mentors,” says Rodrigues who recently retired from his job as a case manager for the Hawaii State Family Services and now serves as the program manager for Surfrider Spirit Sessions.
But once they come out, volunteers seem to stay; many of the mentors were returning for their fourth or fifth session. All expressed a desire to give back to the community and share “the stoke” of catching one’s first wave. (To learn about Surfrider from a volunteer’s perspective click the video below.)

“When you’re out there surfing, all of your problems get washed away,” says Sean, who had never surfed before being in the program. He admits he didn’t believe his mentor or the SSS staff when they told him he would catch a wave his first day.
“Just like that your slate is wiped clean,” he said. “And that for me was a natural high, I didn’t need any drug, I didn’t need to drink, I didn’t need anything negative to make me feel like this.”

Each session closes with a 5-minute “Malama ‘Aina” where the staff, mentors and mentees all clean their stretch of beach of any rubbish and cigarette butts. Last session they picked up around 10,000 cigarettes.

“No matter who you are you always have something to give back,” says Derosier, emphasizing that many of the kids coming through their program have very low self-esteem and only see themselves as a burden on society.

This is all part of the greater SSS mission to get youth of out the “bad land” where confusion, addiction and abuse prevail and into the “good land” which is a place of good citizens and higher aspirations. Surfing, they argue, can connect these two places.

“Most behaviors are linked to survival,” Derosier explains. “They aren’t bad kids.”

While participation in the sessions was court ordered in the beginning, SSS has seen an increasing number of youth requesting referrals to their program. Some, like their current Junior Mentor Manager and two Junior Mentor interns, went through the program and now work for Spirit Sessions.

The staff works closely with the state court system and has a retired judge sitting on their Board of Directors. The court system also supports SSS fiscally with some funding and the free use of a former detention facility which, painted with murals of waves and sunsets, now serves as the Spirit Session headquarters. Derosier says that while judges or probation officers won’t allow the kids out of the detention house for parents or friends, they will let release them to go surfing with their mentor.

History

To say that this program is unique would not be an exaggeration; as far as Derosier knows, it is the only one of its kind in the nation. Started in 2007, Surfrider Spirit Sessions was initially just a program to take adjudicated or troubled teens surfing as a healthy outlet for adrenaline. Over the years the program has grown organically with Derosier estimating that more than 50 percent of the program stems out of the interests of the kids they mentor.

“Really funny things started happening,” says Derosier. “One day the kids showed up and they were like ‘Aunty, I’m kind of stiff can we stretch?’” One mentor that session happened to be a yoga instructor and just like that yoga was incorporated into Spirit Sessions.

“Tourists would try to join out circle, which the kids loved,” says Derosier with her characteristic liveliness. Even the idea of surfing as a way to inspire change came out of a book Derosier authored called “The Surfer Spirit” whose sales helped fund the first pilot of Surfrider Spirit Sessions. Other questions about the reef led to the inclusion of small science experiments taught by a marine biologist mentor.

“The judge and probation officers were freaking out,” says Derosier. “These kids don’t like school but here they are learning about zooxanthellae and ahapua’a.” Out of curiosity, Program and Development Coordinator Scott Naguwa decided to quiz the kids the next week and they remembered.

In 2009, Surfrider Spirit Sessions officially became a registered independent non-profit corporation. While they are currently hosting two 8-week sessions per year, Surfrider hopes to expand their program in the near future.

The Future

The Spirit Sessions team is working with Kapiolani Community College to start a pilot program, called Safari, that will teach college level science courses through surfing and other ocean sports. Naguwa, an avid waterman with a background in environmental science and marine biology, believes anything from physics to meteorology to material science can be taught using surfing.

Derosier hopes it will further combat the prevalent truancy and the “can’t achieve anything” image that many of these kids have of themselves.

“If you can even get them to say they want to attend a college level class, it’s huge,” Derosier explains.

“It’s not about charity, not about ‘oh, poor you’,” says Derosier. “This is about building them up. My goal ultimately is to just help kids so that our community will be stronger.”

Slam poetry and the art of communication

By Alvin Park

David Kim said his interest in slam poetry was piqued when he saw a group of older teenage boys recite at a public square in Philadelphia.

Then 14 years old, Kim was astonished by the performance and wondered why the art form was drawn parallel to “poetry” – a term he associated with rudimentary rhyming and monotone expression.

“When I was younger, I had never heard the term ‘slam poetry,’ ” said Kim, a 20-year-old Travel Industry Management major at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “It was all so new and unheard of for me, but I was drawn to it for some reason.”

After moving to Hawaii during his sophomore year, Kim sat in on events that his high school slam poetry club hosted, and realized that true forms of the art were more earnest and sincere than other forms of expression he saw in the past. Yet, it was still very unfamiliar to Kim who was more used to seeing teenagers seeking catharsis through conventional painting and writing.

“One thing I’ve noticed is their passion,” Kim said, recalling the group of boys he saw back in Philadelphia. “I think that really got me interested in what they were saying. If anyone is that passionate about something, people will listen.”

Kim’s sentiments about the art of slam poetry seem to be spreading and becoming more recognizable – especially among the college demographic. A number of national youth-oriented slam poetry groups have sprung up in recent years such as Youth Speaks and Urban Word NYC. And while officials from higher institutions often ignore slam poetry as not having any academic merit, it’s slowly finding its way into courses and programs of study. For example, students at Berklee College of Music, in Boston can even choose to pursue a minor in the art form.

Even from a local perspective in Hawaii, slam poetry has grown “exponentially,” according to Kealoha Wong, an internationally acclaimed slam poet and founder of HawaiiSlam, First Thursdays and the Hawaii-chapter of Youth Speaks.

Wong was born as Steven Kealohapau’ole Hong Ming Wong, but goes by the stage name Kealoha, which translates to “the love.” Born and raised in Honolulu, Wong was a self-proclaimed “closet nerd” who possessed a strong aptitude for mathematics – ranking 9^th in the nation in the National Math League and even scoring a perfect 800 on the arithmetic section of his SATs.

Wong’s endowment allowed him to eventually attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – the nation’s prestigious institution for science and engineering, while also known for having notoriously low admission rates. While there, Wong pursued his passion for environmental energy technology by choosing Nuclear Engineering as his major.

After working at a management-consulting job in San Francisco shortly after graduation, Wong soon realized that the corporate world wasn’t for him. Though he had learned a lot about business during his short tenure in the industry, the hours were long and unsatisfying, which left him feeling that his life was being wasted on helping “rich companies get richer.”

Wong read an ad in San Francisco’s weekly newspaper The Guardian promoting a slam poetry event near his apartment. He had never heard of the emerging art form before, but decided to check it out since poetry was one of his interests in high school. After Wong’s first experience in slam poetry, his eyes were opened and an unquenchable interest was sparked.

“When I was in San Francisco, I was like ‘Yeah, this is not for me,’ ” Wong said. “Going to a [poetry] slam really inspired me to take that bold leap.”

Inspired, Wong began to write incessantly for days, even resulting in neglected consulting work. Still yearning to learn the art form more, he attended every poetry slam that he could in the Bay Area. Then in 2001, Wong finally left the comfort of his well-paying career path and returned back to Hawaii to reconnect with family, friends and nature.

“I came home not knowing what I was going to do. I had no clue,” Wong said. “But I started to write about it and started to perform a lot.”

Wong spent the next couple of years sharing his work at open mics and showcases around the state. He also found himself as a front man for Communication, a hip-hop and funk-based band, started doing poetry workshops in numerous schools, and played the lead role in “Chase,” a hip-hop theatre production.

At this point, Wong was now making a living as a full-time poet, something that he had never dreamed of doing after graduating from college.

“I was doing poetry full time before I even started HawaiiSlam,” Wong said. “I was just going into schools, performing for concerts and festivals — almost like being a musician, but instead of playing an instrument, my instrument was my mouth and the sound that came out was poetry.”

Eventually, Wong decided he wanted to start up a group that would foster a new generation of slam poets and keep the art form thriving in the islands. So in spring of 2003, he founded HawaiiSlam and launched First Thursdays at its first venue.

“At some point I was like ‘you know what?’ we need to have a home base and I [was] happy to dedicate the time to make that happen,” Wong said.

HawaiiSlam, a non-profit organization dedicated to showcasing poets around the state, runs the nationally certified First Thursdays slam poetry competition every month at Fresh Café. First Thursdays soon became the largest registered poetry slam in the world with over 600 people in attendance  — even surpassing the flourishing art communities in Germany and San Francisco.

First Thursdays showcases some of Hawaii’s best performers, including slam poets, touring poets, live musicians and live painters. The event was created to provided a platform for all artists who wish to set foot on its stage and share their words. It also strives to expose its audience to art forms that they may not be familiar with – thus creating awareness and fostering an appreciation for it.

“The event is not just restricted to slam poetry,” Kim said, who had attended a couple First Thursdays events. “You will find a lot of mediums of expression that are all really cool to experience.”

Since First Thursdays is primarily a poetry slam – a competition where slam poets fight for supremacy – the poets with the best spoken words qualify for the HawaiiSlam team, which goes on to compete in mainland festivals and competitions such as the National Poetry Slam.

HawaiiSlam follows a traditional selection schedule that is reflective of other national poetry slams. From September until March, the top two poets from each First Thursdays slam qualify for the Grand Slam Finals, which is held in every April (and happens to be HawaiiSlam’s anniversary.) The Grand Slam Finals then takes the top 12 poets and throws them into a high-energy elimination round to determine the HawaiiSlam team.

However, to encourage artistic creativity without the pressure of competition, HawaiiSlam also hosts “No Rules” slams from May through August and in December. During these events, the slam doesn’t count towards HawaiiSlam team qualification, and instead, strives to push the boundaries of performance poetry by lifting up restrictions that regular poetry slams adhere to. This allows for a wealth of different talent showcases such as musical pieces, cover poems, dancers and visual artists.

“I tend to de-stress the competition as much as possible,” Wong said. “In the end, regardless of who wins, the winner is poetry. People walk away having heard poems, and that’s hot – it’s awesome.”

After performing at the UH’s Ka Leo Arts Festival last fall, Wong sought to find some way to create a platform for student expression. Wong’s performance at the festival garnered a strong response from the student body, and many requests were made to have more artistic open mic sessions on campus. After some planning and approval of funding, the inaugural HamSlam event was started this semester in Hamilton Library.

“I thought it would be good to get a slam poetry session started on campus as a free evening event,” said Teri Skillman, events and communication coordinator of Hamilton Library. “Kealoha was interested and supportive so we went for it.”

The first session, which happened in February, attracted more than 80 people with 19 poets performing. The next two sessions this semester will be held on March 15 and April 19, but organizers are planning ahead and requesting a funding approval to keep the series going on through the fall semester as well.

Though majority of the performances at the first HamSlam were original slam poetry, there were also musical performances and short story readings. But Wong says the event is open to all forms of artistic expression, especially at a venue such as the library.

“A library is sort of a natural place to let thoughts roam,” he said. “We’re surrounded by books, media, and technology, and so bringing [the event] here is sort of like bringing the words and ideas home.”

And although Wong has his hands full in terms of organizing future slam poetry events, he is blessed with the opportunity to share an art form he is passionate about.

“[Slam poetry] is the perfect combination of ideas and performance, theatre and intellectuals, and literature and poetry,” he said. “It’s been an amazing journey bringing slam poetry out and letting it fly. “