Making waves in surfing for women and girls from all backgrounds

Yvette’s journey started in 2016 when her eldest child decided to pursue surfing, opening her eye to the gender, class, ability and even language barriers to entry. As a sports enthusiast, she wasn’t going to standby, so founded Wave Wahines and provided a surf environment her child felt happy in.

Championing women and girls form all backgrounds, this inspirational Devon-based surf club has become a voice for diversity and inclusion, encouraging a wave of change within the surf community.

With the help of National Lottery funding, the club offers a varied surfing programme which includes surf therapy, sessions for all age groups, and more recently, their first cohort of girls from Syrian resettled families, who challenged inclusion barriers that face immigrants through the power of sport.

From the experiences of the young Wahines themselves, to seriously uncompetitive competitions; in this episode of Amazing Starts Here, Sam Quek meets Yvette to explore the roots, impact and ambition of this inspirational National Lottery funded female-focused surf club.

Sam Quek added: “As a former elite athlete, I’ve been fortunate to benefit directly from National Lottery funding and have seen how it’s helped us bring home medals galore from Olympic and Paralympic games.

“In this series, I will be meeting some impressive people who have been making their mark in all aspects of life across the UK and catching-up with some familiar faces to find out how National Lottery support has empowered them to turn their dreams into reality.

“I hope you can join me to find out where the amazing starts”.

Yvette’s incredible Wave Wahines is one of the thousands of organisations throughout the UK which benefit from the £30 million raised every week for good causes by National Lottery players.