Educational Surfing Center

Empowering youth at risk through new skills

The Educational Surfing Center will address several key challenges:

1. Improve accessibility to the ocean for low socio-economic groups;
2. Engage youth on the streets, especially in Yafo;
3. Empower youth at risk;
4. Integrate teenagers from diverse communities: Jewish, Arab, secular, religious, boys and girls.

It will be operated by the non-profit organization, HaGal Sheli (My Wave), which seeks to establish the ocean as an educational tool across the city, create a safe space for youth at risk which is fun and attractive to them, operate a multi-year educational program which uses surfing as a vehicle for empowerment, and build a peer-to-peer educational model that integrates youth across diverse communities.

The proposed location of the Educational Community Surfing Center is the southern end of Charles Clore Park. It directly faces the beach and the optimal surfing area. Adjacent to an area is designated as a green public space (to be converted from a parking lot).

A full-scale educational surfing center would enable the Municipality to:

• Meet city-wide demand for HaGal Sheli programs.
• Offer the full suite of HaGal Sheli programs throughout the year.
• Offer both formal educational programs in the morning and informal educational programs in the afternoon to reach up to 100 teenagers each day.
• Create a safe space for youth-at-risk which is fun and attractive to them.
• Consolidate HaGal Sheli’s program and storage spaces and improve proximity to the beach and participant safety.
• Improve accessibility to surfing for all residents through Digi-Tel partnership.

Requested donation: $650,000

The building will be named according to the wishes of the donor.