A Wahine Surfs for Change
In this episode, host David Helvarg and Vicki Nichols Goldstein sit down with Dionne Ybarra, director of the Wahine Project, whose path to the ocean was anything but direct. Raised in an inland Mexican American farmworker family, Ybarra didn’t find surfing until she was 38 years old — and when she did, she looked around the lineup and didn’t see many people who looked like her. Rather than paddle back to shore, she did something about it. Ybarra launched the Wahine Project — wahine being the Hawaiian word for surfer girl — and has since taught thousands of young girls, along with some boys and adults, to read waves and face their fears, from the kelp-cold waters of Monterey all the way to Mexico, Gaza, and beyond. It’s a story about belonging in the surf, and about what it means to ride waves not just for yourself, but for the ocean itself.
