Surf Action – what’s it all about?

I knew Surf Action was a UK charity that helped veterans through surfing, but that was it.

Then I discovered their office in Heartlands, Pool and popped in for a chat over a cup of tea.

Managing director Russ Pierre, kindly took a break to talk me through what Surf Action do.

It turns out I wasn’t completely wrong. Surf Action do help veterans and they do go surfing, but they do an amazingly massive amount more.

Here’s what Russ had to say:

In short, what’s it all about?

We support veterans who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), psychological injuries, physical injuries, depression and are unemployed.

We run surf camps, and just finished our 5th residential camp in Bude. On the course we had an amputee and a paraplegic. One of those guys was injured in a rolling Land Rover. The other one was an ex-para who survived the Falklands and was in a road traffic accident on Salisbury Plain, and was paralyzed from the waist down.

There’s a lot of those, a lot of injuries outside of combat. We met people in California who had lost their legs in motorbike accidents. They had gone through Afghanistan, Iraq, done all the combat and then come home jump on a motorbike, crashed and lose a leg.

We support them with twice weekly surfing clinics, we do Wednesdays and Fridays. We meet the guys down the beach at Gwithian, and shortly we will be running one at Newquay. That will probably be the Wednesday one.

Is it just combat veterans you help?

It is ex-services really. Like the empowerment project, which is funded from the job centre, that is just ex-services. So while some of those will have seen combat, some might not have done, but they’re all ex-services.

For whatever reason they find themselves unemployed, whether it’s through redundancy, whether they’ve left the army. They’re told “oh yeah you’ll be alright, you’ll walk into a job with all the skills you’ve got”, but when they get out, 300 job applications later they’re still unemployed.

So we help try and find them employment and we’re now running out of Exeter as well.

You also support the families a fair bit don’t you?

Yeah. We have the families project running called Homefront, so every Wednesday afternoon here [Heartlands office] we have the partners [and other family members] come in, they can be very isolated and end up being single parents and the bread winner, whilst the partner sits in a dark room.

We have family events once a month, sometimes that’s a family surfing day, usually at Gwithian.

If the kids and the partner, if all they ever see is the Dad with the psychological problems, it’s not the Dad they used to know or want to know. So when we go surfing, what we’ve seen is the Dad laughing and smiling and joking, and it’s like having their Dad back. It’s Mum’s as well but it’s mostly Dads.

Those days are about getting the families together, to have a family day, and everyone’s laughing and everyone’s smiling and it’s really good fun.

The whole thing is based around camaraderie and friendship and being able to relate to people who have experienced the same things. With partners who are going through the same things.

We’ve also started supporting blue light services as well. In our charity objectives we always had it in there, that we support armed forces and blue light services. But because for the last 3 years or so it’s been me and Rich [Emerson] we could never focus on it. Now we’ve got a bigger team we’ve started getting fireman phoning us, police phoning, wives of police phoning.

We are now the chosen charity of Newquay Police, which is amazing! Most of the policemen in Newquay seem to be either ex-army or surfers. There’s one guy Alex who’s a surf instructor, bodyboard instructor and lifeguard instructor. They work with all the businesses in Newquay and there’s an abundance of ex-services people on the street and they have lots of problems, so we’re doing some stuff with those guys.

If anybody wants to help with time, money, whatever, how can they do that?

They can donate online.

If they want to donate their time, just give us a call [01209 613300] and whatever events we’ve got going on they can get involved.

The main thing we like at the moment, is if someone wants to help – do a fundraising event.

But the whole thing is about getting smiles on faces, that’s the main thing.

Do you find the ‘surfing’ aspect makes you more approachable than other veteran charities? A more friendly face?

Well it’s all about the fun, the only problem about the name ‘Surf Action’ is a lot of people just think its about surfing.

We always say ‘we are more than surfing’, but people turn up and expect to go surfing, and you can’t let them down! [laughs]

Out of all of it what would you say is the best bit for you?

Working with Alan (in the background). [more laughs]

It’s humbling when you see the smiles on the faces. Like this week when I was up at the residential doing the photography, there’s a guy up there who lost his leg and he’d never been in the water before and we had him lying down going along these right hand peelers. He was hooting and hollering and it was just brilliant. That’s the best bit.

When you’re stuck in doors filling out funding applications, you do miss the beach. So we make sure we get down to the beach every week, cause that’s the best bit. The worst bit is trying to chase bloody funding all the time, that’s the headache.

Here’s a quote from the Surf Action website from one of the veterans, which I think every surfer can appreciate:

“It frees you up – it’s freedom for those two or three hours – kind of like a bit of respite, it takes you mind off it – just leave all that away somewhere on the beach ….we’ll deal with that later, but for now, when we’re surfing, we’re gonna have a laugh – it’s kind of an antidote to PTSD in a way – get your wetsuit on, go for a paddle, ride a wave and it’s like PTSD doesn’t exist for that time – which is all good in my book.”

So on that note I urge you, YES YOU, to donate your time or money and help Surf Action put smiles on the faces of veterans and their families.

A big thanks to Russ for taking time out to talk to me, to Alan for filling the gaps in Russ’s memory and to Fay for the lovely cup of tea and warm welcome.