Annette Wagner and Maike Mallessa Escudero from ‘Provide the Slide’ were in St. Ouen this week collecting local surfboards, after local surfer Tom McAviney offered to help the charity.
Jersey “feels like a family”, the charity said, and the local surf community had been keen to support the project.
They had collected 90 boards by Friday afternoon, and surfboards were still pouring in all day.
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Provide the Slide was set up in 2019 after its founders went on a trip to Liberia.
Having seen that people wanted to surf but had no equipment, its founders started donating their own unused boards.
The charity now collects surfboards mainly from Germany and Switzerland and brings them to destinations in West Africa. They ship surfboards to Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Senegal and Sierra Leone.
Frederik Haug, who is based in Munich, said that the charity has six team members who are all volunteers.
The charity also recently held a fundraising event in Jersey at The Merchants coffee shop, showing the 2020 film ‘Water Get No Enemy’.
The film showcases Liberia’s surfers but also its “very, very difficult history”, Mr Haug said.
Tom McAviney from The Merchants contacted the charity initially to set up a surfboard collection.
He asked the charity how he could help from Jersey, saying that “everyone has a spare board”.
He set up a surfboard collection on the island and this week, representatives from Provide the Slide picked up the boards Mr McAviney had already collected.
They collected more boards during their visit and held a fundraiser.
Pictured: The boards are likely to end up in Liberia.
From here, the boards will go in a van to the charity’s storage facility in Bern, Switzerland, and will then be shipped in containers to the charity’s destinations — Mr Haug says they will most likely go to Liberia. There, Provide the Slide works with local partners that distribute the boards.
Mr Haug explained that the charity makes sure that boards are in proper condition.
“It’s nice to see people down there do something that would never happen in their position normally,” Mr Haug said. “We create an impact.”