Sustainable Surfing Camps and Surf Lessons

To share our love of the ocean through surfing, mutual respect for land, sea,and each other.

Tag Archives: Environment


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What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

I thought I would share these simple steps,  I use this formula when creating in general and projects, camps, workshops, life, art, etc.

Amazingly simple step are both brilliant and effective.  They have staying power and make sense across the board. For me, simple is powerful.

I was honored to be given a similar soulful guide like this many years ago and yes,  it altered  my entire life.   There was such an awakening of what I truly wanted to accomplish in my life and a huge wave of passion and adventure began.  My sense of life direction like the tides turned, I so love the ride and am so very grateful.

So, ask yourself:  “What Will YOU Create that Will Make the World Awesome?”   Lovely steps below..

The link to the full article where these steps originated is below, mahalo Greg McKeown. Though I  brazenly did a bit of my own edits….everything brilliant is Greg’s.

Step 1: Sketch Your Career. It is so easy to get consumed by activities in our lives and careers. We get so caught up in living our lives that we don’t stop to think sufficiently about our lives. We are reacting instead of being strategic. When I find this happening, I use this simple tool to get a broader perspective. You start on the left at the beginning of your career and end on the right hand side (today). You draw a single line up if you were enjoying the experience and down if it was unfulfilling for you. Write down where you were working, what you were working on, and any other factors that shaped your experience.   It also works if you paint, or make a collage, or write a song, or a poem!!!

Now Breathe, no, c’mon really slooow breathe!

(See the original Harvard Business Review piece What Will You Create to Make the World Awesome? to see/use the sketch template for Step 1 and 2).

Step 2: Connect the Dots. Use the sketch from Step 1 as a launch pad into being an anthropologist of your own life. Go somewhere quiet. You might think of it like a strategic offsite for your own life and career.

Ask: When was I truly happy and why? What activity or theme do I keep coming back to? What is my gravitational pull? When was life and work effortless for me? What isn’t working for me? When do I seem most like myself? When was it meaningless and why? When was work meaningful and why? Don’t rush the process. Pause long enough to really listen. Write the answers down as they come so you can reflect on them later. I am visual so I started a simple collage to represent these happy things and ended up doing THREE monstrous collages that blew my mind. It not needed it!!!!

Step 3: Ask, “What Will I Create that Will Make the World Awesome?” This is WONDERFULLY wild question ( I LOVE IT!) but an essential element of strategy is, to state the obvious, thinking about what we want to create in the future.

Ask: What would I do if I could do anything? What would I do if all jobs paid the same? If I could only achieve one thing in my career, what would it be? What do I really want? Again, these are big questions. But my experience is that people spend far more time worried about their job than in creating a vision for their career and how they can uniquely contribute to the world.

(If you are looking for a pep talk, this three minute video from “Kid President” does a brilliant job challenging us to figure out what we can do to make the world awesome). Brilliant!!!!

From Greg: Many years ago I followed a process not at all unlike this one and, without exaggeration, it changed the course of my life. The insight I gained led me to quit law school, leave England and move to America to start down the path as a teacher and author. You’re reading this because of that choice. It remains the single most important — and strategic — career decision of my life.

It’s a simple process. But it can help us to break down some complex questions. Like the poet Mary Oliver’s beautifully haunting question: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Link to Greg’s story: What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? | LinkedIn.

Someone brilliant who is changing the world..

Greg McKeown Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum


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Garden Fairy Chandeliers

Garden Fairy Chandeliers.

This is step by step instructable that will take you through the whole process of making these solar mason jars with a bead “Chandelier” inside. They look great during the day but really shine at night.  You’re garden Faries will love them!


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Celebrate Makahiki Season Kalo Recipes, Magic Herbs,Surf and Ahupua’a by KAHEA

The Makahiki season was the ancient Hawaiian New Year festival, in honor of the god Lono of the Hawaiian religion.

It was a holiday covering four consecutive lunar months, approximately from October or November through February or March. Thus it might be thought of as including the equivalent of modern Thanksgiving and Christmas traditions.

Green House Worshops Sat, November 17th & Ahupua’a – Keiki Shirt

* Makahiki Food Plants Cooking Series (read history and see the kahea ahupua’a t-shirt below)
The Hawaiian season of * Makahiki is upon us. Natural Food Chef Gigi Miranda will lead this cooking series to honor the season focusing on healthy recipes using traditional plants, ʻUala, Kalo, Ulu and Niu. Each session will cover one plant in-depth and feature a farmer or gardener sharing their harvest.

The Green House Saturday, November 17th 10 – noon
Fee $50/Class or $180/Series 1/17, 12/1, 8 & 15 Advanced Registration and Prepayment Required To see calendar & register online http://www.thegreenhousehawaii.com Or call (808) 524-8427

Herbal Tinctures and Infusions Workshop
Learn how herbal tinctures and infusions can add more herbal magic healing power to your life and how to make them yourself with Herbalist and Ethnobotanist Laura Shiels. A helpful informational booklet will also be provided.

The Green House Saturday, November 17th 1 – 3pm
Fee $20 Advanced Registration Required
To see calendar & register online http://www.thegreenhousehawaii.com Or call (808) 524-8427

Betty Gearen The Green House Hawaii 224 Pakohana Street Honolulu, HI 96813
(808) 524-8427 http://www.thegreenhousehawaii.com

*Today, the Aloha Festivals celebrate the Makahiki tradition

The Makahiki festival was celebrated in three phases. The first phase was a time of spiritual cleansing and making hoʻokupu, offerings to the gods. The Konohiki, a class of royalty that at this time of year provided the service of tax collector, collected agricultural and aqua-cultural products such as pigs, taro, sweet potatoes, dry fish, kapa and mats. Some offerings were in the form of forest products such as feathers. The Hawaiian people had no money or other similar medium of exchange. These were offered on the altars of Lono at heiau – temples – in each district around the island. Offerings also were made at the ahupuaʻa, stone altars set up at the boundary lines of each community.

All war was outlawed to allow unimpeded passage of the image of Lono. The festival proceeded in a clockwise circle around the island as the image of Lono (Akua Loa, a long pole with a strip of tapa and other embellishments attached) was carried by the priests. At each ahupuaʻa (each community also is called an ahupuaʻa) the caretakers of that community presented hoʻokupu to the Lono image, a fertility god who caused things to grow and who gave plenty and prosperity to the islands.

The second phase was a time of celebration: of hula dancing, of sports (boxing, wrestling, sliding on sleds, javelin marksmanship, bowling, surfing, canoe races, relays, and swimming), of singing and of feasting. One of the best preserved lava sled courses is the Keauhou Holua National Historic Landmark.

In the third phase, the waʻa ʻauhau — tax canoe — was loaded with hoʻokupu and taken out to sea where it was set adrift as a gift to Lono.At the end of the Makahiki festival, the chief would go off shore in a canoe. When he came back in he stepped on shore and a group of warriors threw spears at him. He had to deflect or parry the spears to prove his worthiness to continue to rule.

Ahupua’a – Keiki Shirt (also women)

Find AT Kahea online

Image of Ahupua'a - Keiki Shirt

Mauka to Makai summarizes the philosophy of Hawaiian ecology and economy. Everything that is done on land, effects the ocean–and vice versa. Mahi`ai (farmers) up mauka and the lawai`a (fishermen) at the shore would exchange food crops and fish. This interdependence is the basis for all of Hawaiian society.

Design generously provided by AIKS, Kanoa Nelson, Mo’olelo Designz.

Shipping is free for orders within Hawai’i and the continental U.S. International orders are assessed a small additional fee to cover shipping costs. $15.00

http://shop.kahea.org/product/ahupua-a-keiki

100% proceeds from these shirts go to support grassroots, community work of KAHEA. Please Tell them Ocean Girl Project sent you!!


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Ocean Girl Surf Camp alternatives to Plastic Ocean

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Plastic- ocean – a 100% human-caused disaster

The disposable plastic bottle symbolizes waste and litter around the world. But it is not just plastic bottles and careless littering that threaten to turn the oceans from life-sustaining to life threatening.

Bottles and bags. Discarded toys, product packaging and cheap holiday decorations. Household and industrial waste of a thousand kinds.

Littered, dropped, dumped. Used despite safer alternatives. Carelessly disposed, improperly managed. Not reduced, not reused and not recycled.

Rolling, blowing, floating and flowing into the world’s oceans.

Plastic-free ocean – a 100% human-accomplishable goal

Plastic in the oceans is entirely caused by human action and human inaction. It has as much potential to do harm as the worst climate change scenario and is having greater immediate effects, yet it so far receives comparatively no attention, and very little private or government action or funding.

There are a number of ways that marine science, waste management, recycling and materials experts, biochemists and medical professionals might be brought together to work on the interrelated problems from a number of critical angles. But currently, there are no major collaborative efforts among these disciplines.

Changing these situations will require raising awareness and education to motivate changes in consumer behavior. It will take cooperation from businesses to change products and packaging. It will take political action to improve waste management and recycling practices. And it will require financial support for research to find ways to recover and reprocess the millions of tons of plastic already accumulated in marine environments, and other ways to remedial already existing biological and human health effects.

There are many simple and economically practical solutions for reducing the use of plastics, for safely and appropriately reusing certain plastic items, and for improving the handling of plastic waste to make sure that it enters the recycling stream rather than the typical waste stream.

How to keep the problem from getting worse

Consumers need to be  educated about how to reduce, reuse and recycle plastics. Of these actions, the most important by far is to REDUCE,REUSE, RECYCLE the use of plastic in every aspect of daily living. This is neither as difficult nor inconvenient as it seems, and it can deliver long-term health benefits and immediate cost savings.

Spreading the word

Plastic waste, and particularly its accumulation and breakdown in the world’s oceans, are a far larger problem than heart disease or cancer, and unquestionably contribute to both of these conditions.

Plastic in the oceans is more damaging and far-reaching than deforestation, habitat destruction and other environmental issues, and it is the most directly actionable of all environmental threats.

Spread the word.

Organizations like  Ocean Girl Project needs your support,  please CONTRIBUTE by spreading the word. The Ocean Girl Project’s primary purpose is affordable educational and sustainable actions for our kids in Hawaii .

LIke us FAcebooK or sign up here for emails and updates!


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Sustainable Goals-Ocean Girl Project

Becausewesurf.com together with the Ocean Girl Project have established sustainable team goals that represent our core values as surfers.

Our primary goal: To live and work simply, and purposefully towards a common good for all.

Be a living example: Giving attention, investigation and transformation to what and where we purchase, what we support, promote, what we teach, what we might sell, and to bring that awareness into what is now or will be the accumulative effects on the islands, ocean and its people.

Beliefs into action: If we can reduce or eliminate further damage to the ocean by some of our alternative choices and sharing of ideas and solutions, we know more people, more businesses will be inspired to make changes that will impact our planet, bring forth solutions and power a powerful wave of humanistic responsibility and action.

One of the ways we do this is by limiting our use of plastic, we are striving throughout every step of our sustainable surf camps to begin and stay single use plastic free.

As surfers especially, there are very practical reasons for the sustainable surf camp to be plastic free including preserving and maintaining a healthy ocean environment for all generations, preventing the often fatal consequences of plastic pollution on sea life, cutting down the use and the import of single use plastic product which reduces fuel consumption, overall economic benefit to community, and most important, eliminating the health risk of exposure to toxic plastic/petroleum chemicals.

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