When one thinks of surfers one does not generally equate them with being modern-day heroes, but to millions of individuals living in impoverished areas, former pro surfer Jon Rose is their hero.
Jon’s parents divorced when he was 10 and he grew up in a tiny Laguna studio near the beach with his dad, Jack. His father was a construction worker a problem solver; upon reading about the lack of clean water in Africa, he came up with a simple system of capturing rainwater and, using his own money, started “Rain Catcherâ€, a non-profit organisation that helps educate villages in Africa on how to catch and filter rainwater.
It seems that Jon inherited his father’s penchant for being a “problem-solver†as, after peaking as a pro surfer, doing his bit as an adventurer, writer, and photographer, he looked for something new to tackle and came up with the idea of Waves For Water, which entailed taking portable water filters with him when he went on surfing trips and delivering them to areas where they were needed.
In 2009, after an Indo trip with some of his boys, Jon was en-route to Bali to deliver 10 water filters for what would have been his first Waves for Water mission when they were forced to stay on-board the boat instead of booking into a hotel because the seas were too rough to make it into port and a 7.6 earthquake rocked Padang, demolishing the city of 600,000, including the hotel where they’d planned to stay.
Never in his wildest imagination did Jon think that the filters he had on him would be so needed; he spent the next 30 hours setting them up at relief centres all over the town so that the people would at least have access to clean, potable water. Jon had found his mission in life and since then Waves for Water has teamed up with surf company Hurley International to develop a DIY volunteer program called Clean Water Couriers.
These Clean Water Couriers are all surfers who, when chasing the perfect wave in third-world countries, carry filters with them. They either connect with local non-profits in the area or travel to the remote villages themselves and set up the filters and show the locals how to use them to access clean drinking water.
So far Waves 4 Water volunteers have successfully set up various types of filtration systems in Bali, Chile, Haiti, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Samoa and plan to do a lot more.
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