Yonder Surf Academy is the CIC arm of Yonder, an all-women’s surf school in North Tyneside. Our mission is to inspire and support marginalised women and girls to build confidence, self-esteem and positive mental health. The Yonder Surf Academy CIC was set up purely to be able to offer lessons, coaching and courses to women and girls in the community who might not otherwise have the opportunity. We recognise that accessing the ocean and surfing can have many barriers and we wanted to remove the financial barrier whilst working hard on all other aspects to create a welcoming and open space for our participants.
Crucially the Yonder Surf Academy CIC provides a safe space, a consistent and regular service that is available to support the most marginalised and disadvantaged groups in our community. Surfing and swimming in the north sea in an integral catalyst in helping women and young girls to feel connected to their local environment, their peers, their support workers and themselves.
“It was unbelievable to be offered such a high quality of provision of such an exciting sport in a format that was accessible and culturally informed for our teenage girls, many of whom have trauma and manage mental health challenges.”
Bridget Stratford MBE Young Lives
Since establishing Yonder Surf Academy CIC we have worked closely with The Acorns Project -The Angelou Centre - The Pheonix Detached Youth Project - Action Foundation & the Young Lives team - Northern Stage - Queer Surf Club - Cullercoats Primary School & John Spence School
In May 2024 we established Solace Surf Club in partnership with Young Lives, Action Foundation, crowd funded for by the local community. Solace has already proven incredibly successful. Supporting over twenty young girls from the North East refugee community, Solace provides a safe and consistent space for our young girls to build life skills such as swimming and enjoy new experiences such as surfing in a supportive and trauma informed environment. Together with our eight volunteers we are developing this service further, recognising it’s importance in helping these girls to deal with and process the many stressors that affect them on a day to day basis.
Youth worker and Solace partner Bridget Stratford MBE cannot stress the importance of these sessions enough;
‘On arrival for the sessions the children are often hungry, tired, withdrawn and disassociated and can present challenging behaviours such as being physically and verbally aggressive. Following the session, there is often a marked difference in the children’s demeanour. They are visibly more physically relaxed, such to the extent the girls often sleep on the way home and I’m many cases more readily available to engage in conversations with their peers and crucially also with their youth workers who are able to support the girls in processing their day.’
Our successful ‘Madre’ sessions have now been running fir the past two years. ‘Madre’ is a supportive surf group set up to help get mothers back in the sea or in the sea for the first time, “It’s been such an amazing opportunity to take part in these sessions, a great incentive to get back in the sea with a group of supportive women, I cannot thank Sally and Tom enough.” Steph.
Feedback from participants and schools shows the transformative impact we have had, with people detailing how our support has helped them to address depression, anxiety, isolation and low self-esteem.
“In the current climate it is so important that our young people are happy and active for both their physical and mental health wellbeing” Sally, Bryson, Teacher John Spence School.
Ensuring a safe, supportive and positive experience is extremely important to us and participants really value that. As one parent said “their confidence has grown and they now put themselves forward to get involved in all sorts of things that they wouldn’t have done before”.
We work to empower women and girls in our local community. We offer them a connection to the sea that many have never experienced despite living so close. We want to continue to do this and have established a specific program that will work closely with teenage girls and women in the surrounding area. for teenagers we find that it is at this key age that many girls stop partaking in physical activities, feeling too self conscious or uncomfortable to try something new, it's a time of exams and often a time of anxiety. We work to introduce our community to a lasting and positive activity that will pervade into the other parts of their life and engender a "yes I can" attitude and mindset that will help ease their mind and introduce them to an activity that they can take with them through life.
Our projects rely solely on funding and donations.
If anyone would like to make a donation or offer sponsorship for The Yonder Surf Academy CIC please do get in touch, we would love to talk more, you can donate directly below or email us for more information.
info@surfyonder.com
Thank you
Sally McGee - Founder.
