It’s a little easier when someone helps you balance.
Photo courtesy Dionne Ybarra, The Wahine Project

The Wahine Project Knows No Barriers

Dionne Ybarra + surfboards.
Photo courtesy of Dionne Ybarra, The Wahine Project

Early in the morning, a car with a rooftop rainbow of surfboards pulls into the beach parking lot. A group of sweatshirted girls shifts eagerly, and a little sleepily, from one bare foot to the other in the cold Monterey, California, sand.

Dionne Ybarra steps out of her car, and the girls’ faces light up as she greets them each by name.

These are the girls of The Wahine Project, and they are here to surf.

To prepare for their plunge into the sea, the Wahine (wa-hee-nee), or surfer girls, gather in a lopsided circle around Ybarra and, as they transition from one yoga pose to another, they listen intently to her.

Ybarra advises that they might face a challenge in the ocean today, but she encourages, “Remember the last time when you were afraid, and you did it!” Then she reminds the girls that, when they are at school and are feeling worried or unsure, they can draw on the lessons they learn here at the beach.

The pre-surfing circle
Photo courtesy Dionne Ybarra, The Wahine Project

Soon the girls break their circle, grab the boards, and head to the water. Some girls giggle on the water’s edge while others charge straight into the breaking waves. Adult mentors and the more experienced girls encourage the more cautious ones. Everyone is motivated to move at her own pace.

With a little encouragement, even the most hesitant eventually achieve success!
Photo courtesy Dionne Ybarra, The Wahine Project

The Beginning of a Great Idea

Ybarra was raised by her well-intentioned mother to be terrified of the water. She didn’t learn to swim until she was 30. And after a few years of swimming, she learned to surf.

In the meantime, in her job as a parent educator, she worked with women through their pregnancies and labor. Instead of just teaching them popular breathing techniques, she wanted to give these women tools they could use beyond labor. She says, “I was exploring ways to integrate things that would help them with birth, with a screaming baby, and with a teenager who wasn’t coming home.”

She thought a lot about how great it would be to empower girls before they grew up and became mothers.

And she thought about how sports help do that.

That is when the Oh, I See Moment struck: Ybarra realized she could provide girls with these life lessons through the sport she had learned to love—surfing.

And The Wahine Project was born.

Opportunities for All

The Wahine Project offers girls a no-barrier opportunity to experience the thrill of surfing.

Ybarra is always collecting donated girls’ and women’s wetsuits and foam-top surfboards. She has found sponsors, including the local surf shop, and recently got a $15,000 grant from the Foundation for Youth Investment.

While there is a monthly donation for participating, Ybarra never wants that to get in the way of a girl surfing. And she even has been known to pick girls up who can’t get a ride to the beach.

All of this is to ensure that these girls gain confidence in the water so that they can take that confidence out of the water. She explains, “Wahine is an action. It’s everything that you are and how you live. Once a Wahine, always a Wahine.”

Learning to love the water.
Photo courtesy Dionne Ybarra, The Wahine Project

Global Influence

Ybarra’s influence has spread beyond her small hometown and down the coast of California to San Diego, where a new Wahine group has formed.

In addition, every year, Ybarra’s Monterey group helps her collect donated swimsuits and other gear. Then, in the summer, she gathers the donations and her boards, and she drives down to her family’s hometown near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. When she arrives in the village,  she goes door to door to announce that she has returned to surf with the girls, and she distributes the gifts she has brought.

Ybarra has even reached the young girl surfers in the Gaza Strip, where they wear special full-coverage wetsuits to maintain their cultural beliefs. Her California girls send clothing and letters of encouragement to their Middle Eastern sisters.

And this is only the beginning. She wants to make The Wahine Project synonymous with women’s surfing. She envisions its presence at every women’s surf competition.

Since she herself accepts no barriers, it’s inevitable that The Wahine Project will continue achieving success, one wave at a time.

To learn more about Dionne and her work, see her TEDtalk. You can also follow The Wahine Project on Facebook.

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