Our programs focus on cultivating relationships with local partners and facilitating co-designed workshops over one to six months. We collaborate internationally with nonprofits and social impact organizations to produce and facilitate on-the-ground programs focusing on positive youth development in small-scale fishing communities. Embracing emergent strategy principles, we foster adaptability, resilience, and interconnectedness within our initiatives. Through the lens of common world pedagogies, we emphasize collective learning and relationality, strengthening curiosity and creativity among youth.
Our approach highlights how geography shapes youth and how youth, in turn, shape geography, using their voices to create positive futures for their rural fishing communities.
Explore the programs we've launched with local partners from coast to coast:
From short films to street art, stop-motion animation, web design, and photography - participants in our one to six-month programs learn through situational activities targeting language, skills, and knowledge necessary to ascend as empowered authors of their life stories. We prepare youth to access new opportunities that contribute to their personal growth, cultural heritage, and region's biodiversity.
PERÚ
LOCAL PARTNER: LOBITOS CINEMA PROJECT
DATES: September 2014 - Current
The Lobitos Cinema Project (LCP) is a platform creating spaces for community development of the participatory audiovisual arts along the northern coast of Peru. LCP is an open space for connections between local communities and vultures interested in education through creative media arts education. The vision is to generate a new idea of development through storytelling, listening to the community’s voices, and seeing through their lens to create a sustainable future together.
In Lobitos, we also run our Women & Water program, a gender-responsive water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) project for a healthy coastal community. Through participatory audiovisual arts, in addition to water sports and wellness workshops, this program engages local daughters and their mothers as key agents in water management while building inner to outer strength. We strive to promote local mothers' and daughters’ participation and leadership capabilities as stewards of positive change for greater gender equity and social-ecological resilience.
MANTA is Vietnam’s first and only official sailing school that promotes human and environmental health via water sports. MANTA takes fishermen off endangered habitats and over-fishing, translating their existing ocean instincts to water-sports coaching and climate change survival skills. This alternative livelihood program is supported by large groups of schoolchildren and corporates.
Enable by a Fulbright research award in partnership with the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi and a grant from National Geographic, with MANTA's support, Coast 2 Coast facilitated PhotoVoice workshops with local fishing families that focused on the social and ecological impacts of low fish availability on the wellbeing of Vietnamese small-scale fishing villages. The data collected was used in part to support the development of a participatory monitoring tool for the implementation of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication (SSF Guidelines). The SSF Guidelines are the first international instrument dedicated entirely to the immensely important small-scale fisheries sector. They are the result of a long and intensive global bottom-up consultative process.
INDONESIA
Action Communication Program in Morotai, North Maluku, Indonesia
October 2018 - April 2019
With grant funding from the U.S. Consulate in Surabaya, Coast 2 Coast partnered with our local partner, A Liquid Future, to launch the "Action Communication" program in Morotai, North Maluku, Indonesia. A Liquid Future is a nonprofit that uses surfing and creative education programs to share knowledge and ideas, increase capacity sharing, protect marine ecosystems, and address climate change and inequity. Over six months, we engaged with schools in three isolated fishing communities, teaching students valuable audiovisual skills. Our curriculum focused on activism-oriented English, where students co-produced their own interviews, PhotoVoice projects, and short narratives. These activities enabled the students to express what they cherished about their beautiful island, fostering pride and advocacy for their social-ecological environment. Through this program, the students cultivated English language skills and also learned how to use digital media to tell their stories and advocate for their communities amidst a rolling tide of tourism across isolated Indonesian islands.
