Not for Sale in Lima, Peru & Brazil's Adriano De Souza

This post is for the members of the Surfrider Foundation San Francisco Chapter's Education Committee, and for my Aussie San Francisco roommate, Michelle, who now lives in Lima.

Here's another film that I missed at this year's USF Human Rights Film Festival.

Generación
11 min., Director: Kate Elston

Thousands of children in Lima, Peru live on the streets where they are victims of violence, police brutality, sexual exploitation and trafficking. Generación is an organization that supports the kids and gets them into homes where they are free to learn, play, and work.

Watch the film here, broken up into 2 parts -



It seems that the program in Lima (featured in this film) is part of a bigger initiative to end slavery, called Not For Sale, which has programs in Thailand, Nepal, Peru, Cambodia, and Uganda. The organization Not for Sale was co-founded by David Batstone, Professor of Ethics at USF!

From a USF student's 2008 blog post about USF students' experiences volunteering for Generación in Lima -

During the day the kids are where all children their age should be, in the classroom learning. Lucy, the founder of Generacion, has one main rule: to live at Generacion the kids must go to school. When the final bell rings, sounding the end of the school day the kids of Generacion waist no time in engaging themselves in one of the other platforms. The older ones quickly head home, change into their wet suits, and grab their surfboards (both of which were donated by various constituent families). Rarely does a day go by that Generacion kids will not be seen playing on the beach or surfing the waves along the San Bartolo boardwalk. A few have become good enough to stand out among Peru’s Southern Coast natives and have the makings of legends on the San Bartolo waves.


photo: kids from the Surfing House

So yes, I discovered that the Lima program has a surfing program - The Surfing House.

More about the Surfing House, from the Not for Sale website - Lucy, our abolitionist in Peru and Not For Sale has created a dynamic program for street children revolves around surfing. Street children are often found in vulnerable situations, stigmatized and marginalized by the greater population. Thus these children internalize this perception, destroying any sense of self-worth. The Surfing Tribe is a prevention program that provides a passion for street children to empower themselves.

Lucy rents a house in a coastal town about an hour from Lima, where fifteen to eighteen kids live full-time. There are a group of fifteen children and teenagers living in the house and all of them go to school, practice sports, and are rebuilding their lives in healthy conditions.

Early on in the surfing program Not for Sale helped by providing surfing equipment so the children could learn how to surf. The children now eagerly surf every morning and some are entering local surfing competitions and performing at a high level.

Surfing has become a meaningful practice that brings physical, psychological, and spiritual benefits. The children are realizing that through surfing they can express themselves, compete, be respected, and connect with nature. Thus, they are establishing their sense of self-dignity through surfing.

Lucy’s innovative prevention and aftercare program currently runs with very little economic resources. In the last year they moved three times to smaller houses due to the high rent. The organization now needs only $1000 a month to maintain itself with minimal necessities.

Go here to watch a video solely about The Surfing House.



photo: Adriano

This reminds me of an article that I read in the November 2009 issue of Surfing Magazine just the other day about a young surfer from a Brazilian favela - Adriano De Souza, called "7 Days with Adriano De Souza." Unfortunately I couldn't find an electronic copy of the article to link to, here. Very disappointing, because it's a great piece.

Here's a little bit about his story, taken from this article - At the age of 11 he won the Brazilian schools championship, kind of like the Rusty Gromfest or something, which came with a free ticket to Hawaii. But nobody in his family had the money to come along too.

So at 11 years of age, without knowing a word of English, Adriano flew to Hawaii, for two weeks, by himself.

“The stopovers were really difficult,” he says mildly. “The plane went to Dallas, then LA then Hawaii. When I got off in Dallas, I thought I must be in Hawaii already. This guy kept trying to shove me back on the plane, and I was, ‘No! I’m IN Hawaii!’”