The Bocas del Toro islands in Panama are gaining a global reputation as a great place to surf. La Carolina Island House wants to make sure that it’s not just visitors catching those waves by teaching young islanders how to hang ten through a nonprofit called the Bocas Surf Crew.

“Living on an island in the Caribbean and investing in these kinds of destinations, you have to be very responsible in many, many, many ways,” says La Coralina managing director Ariel Barrionuevo. “You are surrounded with communities with so many needs. Since the beginning of this project, we started to look for different things or different actions that we can take as investors to help the local communities.”

Some of those actions were obvious, like contributing to local schools and hospitals. But thinking outside the box, La Coralina wanted to create a nontraditional program that could benefit islanders in new and different ways.

“We started thinking about a program that can get together a lot of people — like private investors and all the kids in this community and local surfers or local intrapreneurs and other people that want to make things better,” says Juan Medo, an Argentine surfer and long-time Bocas resident who helped start the Bocas Surf Crew.

The mentorship program includes kids from ages six through 17. It’s based not just on learning how to surf, but also on surfing’s connect with the environment. Between 20 and 25 students are involved at any given time.

About evenly split between boys and girls, they meet with Medo and volunteer instructors each Saturday for surf lessons and discussions about Bocas del Toro that vary from how to dispose of waste or generate sustainable energy to the importance of going to school. Some of the instructors are young adults who themselves learned how to surf as members of the Bocas Surf Crew.

The program recruits new students through word of mouth or by kids watching their friends or neighbors learn how to surf on Saturday mornings. Once they learn the basics, the kids can participate in local tournaments organized by Bocas Surf Crew.

“Many of these kids, they don’t have access to a surfboard because probably they can’t afford it,” says Barrionuevo. “So being in Bocas Surf Crew, they can have access and they can train every weekend. Many of them are actually very good at surfing and many have potential in terms of making surfing a lifelong sport.

”Keep track of Bocas Surf Crew on their Facebook page here