One Year on since our National Governing Body appointment…
& what a year it’s been!
The Surfing England journey is in full swing & we are stoked you’re on it with us!
At Surfing England, we have seen some great developments & achievements since being appointed as your NGB by Sport England a year ago. We wanted to take a moment to reflect on the last year, let you know what we’ve been up to & what’s to come.
The message is clear though, as a not-for-profit organisation we only exist because of & for YOU! We remain a completely unfunded body, relying on your memberships & our fantastic commercial partners to aid us in delivering the service – the more members we have, the more good we can do as we work in line with our ‘healthy surfing community’ strategy – so if you want to assist us in any way, simply maintaining your membership & encouraging others to join us would be amazing. Here is a glimpse of what you are supporting & receiving…
REPRESENTING OUR SURFING COMMUNITY –From Parliament to the promenades, we’ve spoken and worked on behalf our English surfing community.
BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS – We’ve used surfing as a positive tool for change! Promoting & educating an inclusive surfing community.
MORE SURF EVENTS – Our events have grown from strength to strength, with English championships across the disciplines. We’ve introduced our adaptive championships & delivered events for our surfers & clubs! We’ve run junior events with Rip Curl & supported others like the Student champs & many more to come.
OUR DIVERSE CLUB COMMUNITY GROWS! – With longstanding clubs growing in strength, new ones launching, & more signing up than ever before. We’ve seen an influx of clubs including the Police, the Military & women’s surf clubs! We look forward to our 2018 #Interclubs in September!
RECORD LEVELS OF SURF SCHOOLS RECEIVE ACCREDITATION – It’s been epic to see so many schools signing up & joining our English Surf School scheme; the beach branding is looking awesome. We are hitting the road to inspect them this summer, promoting a safe & professional surf school community.
SURFER MEMBERS ON THE RISE AGAIN – After a challenging phase, it’s great to see membership numbers increasing again. We are working harder than ever to ensure our membership package offers you a fantastic range of benefits! Alongside this, your support enables us to develop surfing in England from grassroots to elite levels.
2018 AGM A SUCCESS – As a membership organisation we like to operate with transparency as one of our core values. The AGM saw members new & old attending, listening, learning & engaging.
A BIG THANKS TO OUR PARTNERS – We are ever-grateful for the support from our partners & it is vital for us to run the organisation. We’ve built good relationships with good people from good companies – to create goodness!
ENVIRONMENTAL VALUES REMAIN A CORE FOCUS – It’s incredible to see the environment at the forefront of the worlds media! We’ve participated under a coalition of water-based organisations to put pressure on the government to introduce a Bottle Deposit Scheme in England & have worked to make our events plastic free.
OUR SMALL TEAM HAS GROWN! – To match our vision for growth & positive impact, we recruited Hannah Brand, our new Operations Coordinator who started in May 2018, whilst our longstanding Operations Manager, Nick Rees, moved in to our Chief Operating Officer role. We will sadly soon wave goodbye to our longstanding Membership Coordinator Sally Lawton as she relocates to Cornwall, but we then welcome Yvette Curtis to the team to fill the role. Our volunteer directors have continued to lead the organisation & believe in the big visions for the future of Surfing England.
TEAM ENGLAND – Our elite programs have delivered teams to World Championships around the globe. Still mainly self-funded, our surfers have been flying the flag for our country & providing opportunity for our elite body boarders, short boarders, long boarders, Stand Up Paddlers and Adaptive Surfers to compete for their country.
SURFING TO DEBUT IN 2020 TOKYO OLYMPICS – We are fulfilling our role in collaboration with our fellow home nation surfing bodies to ensure the best GB athletes represent us on the world stage. UK Sport are still to offer any support for talented surfers but we remain optimistic & committed.
JUNIOR SURFER SCHEME FLOURISHES – This free development scheme is ideal for junior surfers to learn & develop their surfing skills, especially through our surf clubs and surf schools.
WE DON’T RECEIVE ANY FUNDING! – We are continuing our work to change this & bring funding to our organisation. Our NGB status has opened the door for our clubs to apply for funding & we support their applications as part of our vision for supporting and developing English Surfing.
SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS SEE MORE ENGAGEMENT – It’s been awesome to connect more on Instagram, Facebook & Twitter. We use these platforms to inform followers of up to date news from the team. If you’ve not found us, links are at the bottom of this email!
WE ENJOY RECIEIVING YOUR ENQUIRIES – A core value of ours is to support surfers at all levels, & we enjoy helping whether it be a grassroots enquiry about learning to surf, a surfer looking to compete or surf club needing advice. Our team are passionate, friendly & love communicating with our base of members.
SURF COACHES DEVELOP – We are seeing progression as we survey English surf coaches & identify areas for enhancement. We’ve responded by working to offer ISA/SE Surf Coach presenter opportunities & build on our established team, some of whom are representing English coaching around the world.
SUPPORTING OTHER ORGANISATIONS -We work with other brilliant organisations, from Surfers Against Sewage to the Waveproject, and will continue to do so. We even managed to find a use for our old Surfing GB kit, sending it to the Surfers Not Street Children charity in South Africa.
ACHIEVEMENTS – We took a moment to recognize some of the achievements out there, awarding Saunton Hotdoggers with our Surf Club of the year award, and Spike Kane as our Surfing England Global Ambassador.
MORE MEMBERS BENEFITS – We continue to make being a surfer cheaper. Even including private access to friends of Jeep & Fiat scheme! Our latest partnership is with the awesome Ocean Film Festival who are touring the UK in Autumn 2018. Save 10% at 18 selected screenings. Click here to book.
*18 screenings include Porthcawl, Whitley Bay, Abingdon, Poole, Liverpool, Stockport, Dorking, Bristol x 2, Norwich, London x 6, York and Leeds
Finally, our team would like to take this opportunity to thank all of YOU! Our supporters, our Individual Surfer Members, Surf Coaches, Surf Schools, Surf Clubs and partners. We charge on & look forward to seeing you in the sea soon!
