Surfrider Foundation, MAKING WAVES, April 2004

MAKING WAVES, April 2004 issue: Table of Contents

From Surfrider Foundation's 20th Anniversary: Looking Forward . . .

The Surfrider Foundation turns twenty this year—on August 22, to be exact. It's interesting how the psychic registration of these kinds of dates can become more than a sentimental anniversary, and transform into a milepost we can work from, concretely projecting our work and vision far into the future. Our future has waves within and around it, but there is more.

learning to surf photo

Our efforts have always occurred in the context of waves. That context is what we are all about as an environmental group. While we certainly don't all surf, many of us do, and this powerful fact represents our literal standing in the larger community of ocean lovers, informing our passion for the long haul. So from that perspective, in order to honor our past without sentiment, I look toward the next twenty years at the Surfrider Foundation.

Luckily for us, we launch into future years armed with what we learned during our first twenty. I don't say that lightly, because not every organization can say it has truly learned from experience. I say that in light of what business guru and scholar Peter Senge wrote over ten years ago in his masterwork on organizational systems, The Fifth Discipline. To wit: Surfrider Foundation is becoming "a learning organization."

Through wins and losses, through volunteer and paid effort, through the highly leveraged donated dollar and a declining coastal treasure, we have learned to spend our sacred resources completely focused on our mission. We have discovered the benefits of treating each other and our opponents with respect. We have learned the hard value of supporting our chapters in the field, and the grassroots notion of constant recruitment around specific local issues. We found that tight, traditional business discipline works. Yet we discovered that certain risk has value. We are learning to listen. Most of all, we have learned the organizational value of persistence in standing tall on the environment and giving no quarter to those who return again and again to steal the coastal heritage we intend to protect for generations to come. With humility, I have to say that while we have done well, we always have more to learn.

The next twenty years of our work will embrace more effective and constant recruitment. We will continue to add new support to our chapters every year. We will stay focused on our mission, but reach out in ways that address sources of problems as we continue to address the morass of coastal insults that sadly define a modern day at the beach. We will finally capture our international program's potential, while at the same time create a secure, sustainable financial endowment that assures Surfrider Foundation-USA's existence into perpetuity.

There is enormity in all of this, absolute enormity. The ocean, a sea of volunteers and a relatively endless supply of challenges define a very large field indeed. An ongoing learning experience twenty years in the running and still gaining momentumÐpretty heady stuff. Using the word "university" both in its denotative suggestion of a school and in its connotative image of immense size, the late Chilean poet and Nobel laureate, Pablo Neruda, once wrote about the place where we work.

"I need the sea because it teaches me.
I don't know if I learn music or awareness,
if it's a single wave or a vast existence,
or only its harsh voice or its shining
suggestion of fishes and ships.
The fact is that until I fall asleep
in some magnetic way I move in
the university of the waves."

Thank you for twenty years of supporting this work. As an anniversary gesture and a powerful solitary symbol for our shared future, please use the membership form at the center of this newsletter to sign up a friend or loved one.

For the oceans, waves and beaches,

Christopher J. Evans, Esq.,
Executive Director

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