When I first met Aydon Gabourel from the Laru Beya Collective in 2021, I was overwhelmed with this auspicious feeling. In front of me stood a man who is quite literally, changing the world around him.
At the time, Aydon was securing a huge stack of soft tops to the roof of his van. He had his mid-teenage daughter, Adanya, and her friends helping him load up for their upcoming surf day. The excitement in this father’s face read loud and proud that taking these kids surfing was the ultimate feeling of joy for him. There was not one ounce of stress in his demeanor, which can often come on a hot summer day while tying a bunch of boards on a van roof!
I was visiting Rockaway, NY with my friend Kassia Meador to do a weekend activation of surf clinics with local surf groups Laru Beya, a surf collective for local youth, and Benny’s Club, a meet-up club for LGBTQ surfers. We call it The Benny Beya Bash. Over a few days, my mind assuaged in the reminder that Great People exist all over our globe, and I was lucky enough to experience a superb pocket of them in Rockaway.
Laru Beya was started in 2018 by Aydon and his cousin Warren Samson, as a way to bring access to surfing, swimming, and ocean safety to the youth community in Far Rockaway. Its more than just a surf group, it has become a family, and the team does whatever they need to help break the barriers to entry for the local kids, whether its transportation, food, friends, guidance and support, or simply just a safe environment to play in nature.
With extremely-limited to zero access to pools or swimming lessons, and a generational history of exactly the same discrimination, many of the kids in the predominantly BIPOC coastal Queens neighborhoods don’t know how to swim.
In fact, 1/4 of students in New York don’t know how to swim. Pair that with Rockaway’s sometimes vicious rip currents and pounding shorelines, drowning remains a stark reality for teens in the beach town. How can this change?
A lightbulb went off in Aydon’s heart the first time his daughter surfed.
“Summer after summer Adanya would watch the kids from school surf while we were at the beach. After a while, she was just like ‘why not me?’ She said to me one day in 2017, ‘you know, I want to take a surf lesson.’ Until then, I didn't even think about her surfing. Then I started looking around and the majority of these kids that are out here at the surf camps during the summer are not from the community,” Aydon shared with me.
“The first time my daughter ever took a surf lesson, that girl came running out of that water and she ran up to me with this look in her eyes. Ever since she was a toddler, whenever she was fascinated with something, she had this certain look in her eye that she would get, and she still has it. After that first wave when she had that look, immediately I saw it in her face, this girl is going to want to do this forever.
Seeing how that changed her and her friends, that was everything… We would be out all summer, I would have my laptop out there, working on the beach. Adanya and her friends were in the water all day long, seven days a week.”
That summer, Aydon fell in love with being a surf dad, not just for his own kids, but all of the kids. He wanted to take as many kids to the beach as he could, and give them access to a sport and lifestyle he could see was already life-changing for his daughter and her friends.
The following summer, Aydon and Warren pooled together their efforts and organized the beginning of the non-profit Laru Beya Collective, so they could reach more kids, give access to swimming lessons, provide opportunities where there notoriously wasn’t any, and create a space for kids to dream.
One of Laru Beya’s very first participants is a first-generation American-Senegalese young woman named Farmata Dia. She was 20 years old when I first met her in 2021, when she had grown from being a mentee to a mentor in the program.
Farmy blew me away the first time we shared the ocean during our surf clinic. I remember thinking, ‘this girl puts the POP in Pop-Up’. She paddles in hard, and in the blink of an eye, she’s to her feet, staying low, grabbing rail, zooming across the short, fast summer waves of Rockaway, smile unstoppable.
Immediately, I could see she had a natural inclination for surfing and that she was in love with being in the ocean. Surfing is not an easy sport to learn, but Farmy was already well on her way to figuring out how to maneuver a surfboard and read the ocean just after a few summers of surf.
I also met Autumn Kitchens, who had been teaching surf lessons prior to Laru Beya’s inception, and became one of the collective’s lead mentors. With her nurturing demeanor and surf stoke, Autumn mentored Farmy and other teens, and as the summers passed, she then trained Farmy and her peers to then become mentors themselves.
Laru Beya quickly became an ever-growing family. Retention rate for participants has been incredibly high, which means the program has had to keep expanding to serve more and more kids. Autumn has continued to take on more responsibilities with the foundation, all while being a role model to the younger generations. We’re all better off when we are surrounded by positive influences. Autumn is just that.
For the next two summers, I returned to Rockaway for the Benny Beya Bash, which has turned into a family reunion for us all. As Kassia and I would give surf tips on the beach, Farmy and her friends listened intently, studying every move we made in the ocean to figure out how to improve.
As the three years passed, we annually saw these teenage girls turn into blossoming young women, with a world full of dreams, and the strongest sense of community. Farmy and Autumn have traveled extensively together, realizing their surf trip dreams, riding long waves, improving their surf skills, and experiencing surf culture outside of their home.
Each time I’d see Farmy, I kept saying to her, ‘we have to go on a surf trip together!’ I was so curious what this young budding surfer could do on perfect long waves. If you can learn to surf well in Rockaway, point breaks are cake!
~
Now, in 2024, I am sitting on the deck of a house overlooking the ocean in Costa Rica, after a week of great waves. My longtime sponsor The Seea, did a surf-trip giveaway for three women to join us on a campaign shoot. As the universe would have it, sitting next to me on the deck is a winner of the giveaway, Farmy. We made it on a surf trip together, just as we’d been talking about. And a swell joined us, too!
My dream came true, seeing Farmy, popping up on perfect waves, weaving through turns, smiling on the waves, laughing, splashing the water, enjoying the blessing of being a surfer. I’d give her a quick tip, and she’d immediately apply. Her passion beams through her skin. She charges with no apparent fear, she’s full of fun, spunk, and sporty grace on the waves. Most of all, my water time with her revealed this consistently present gratitude for the simple joy of being in the ocean. It’s medicine for us all to be surrounded by people vibrating in the gratitude realm.
Yet it’s not necessarily a path with no resistance for Farmy. Culturally, a life of centering work around surfing does not thrill her parents, who immigrated from Senegal to give their children more opportunities for education and a successful future. Surfing's gifts are hard to understand if they aren’t felt or witnessed, and the world of surf can still carry stigma. Aydon’s happy help transporting Farmy to the beach when she was a teenager was her ticket to ride that she’s forever grateful for.
“Laru Beya changed my life, like, so drastically. Honestly, Aydon gave me a life. Because before that, I literally was just, like, going. Going where? I don't know. Like, I was just going. I had no idea what I was doing. And now, I can dream, and it feels okay to dream, and I can be happy. I’m able to have my own dreams, and I want to help others dream.”
But it isn’t just the lifestyle that keeps parents apprehensive about letting their children get into surfing in Rockaway. A year after Farmy started surfing, her cousin and his three friends drowned from a riptide in Rockaway, even though they were all avid swimmers. Farmy took a break from surfing for a while after that, in respect for her family, and to get over the trauma of losing a family member to the ocean.
Eventually, she yearned for the ocean and channeled the emotion into determination to become a waterwoman, dedicating herself to learning how to be the best and safest surfer she can be.
Farmy tells me, impassioned, “Laru Beya has allowed us to build our community, to get more kids in the water, to volunteer, to give back, and a lot of people are also just healing with Laru Beya. Whatever troubles people have, whatever their background is, they are able to come to a conclusion with that. We work through it. And I've seen it with every single person I’ve met in the program. Everyone transforms once they enter that space, because you're accepted as who you are. And the coolest part is, even if you don't accept yourself, other people are gonna accept you. That's something every single person in life has to learn to do, like accept all parts of ourself. And these are just people that are like, ‘You're you. And we love you. Welcome.’”
Since Laru Beya started its work in 2018, something magnificent has happened. The lineup looks different now. The entire Rockaway Surf Culture has diversified. Now, there are people from all races and backgrounds in the ocean, and the local neighborhood kids are becoming locals in the water, too.
Every weekend during the warmer times of year, Aydon and his extensive volunteer and mentor team are taking kids to the ocean, sometimes for the first time, and helping them to build ocean knowledge, with safety as their corner stone. Now, there are hundreds of kids in the programs, including mentees that have become mentors, like Farmy.
Laru Beya has been working with a coalition of various NY non-profits called the Water Safety Committee to introduce legislation to require swim lessons for all K-12 NY State students if needed. There is also a state bill going to vote in January ‘25 that aims to make a Water and Ocean Safety Awareness curriculum required in NY public schools. As Aydon works to help break the barriers of entry to ocean life for his community, he knows bigger legislation can have an enormous impact for the future generations. There is also a push from the community to extend lifeguard hours during the summer, as drownings are most common when lifeguards are off-duty.
Aydon is whole-heartedly dedicated to the cause, leaving his career in finance to dedicate his time to Laru Beya. While he sees the big picture, he’s working hard to create a team to help him execute the vast undertaking of managing the program. It’s always worth it to him.
“Even for the kids who, you know were dealing with things at home, when they were out on the water, when they were on the beach, all of that melted away. It became therapy,” Aydon remarks in response to why he dedicates his life to this.
He says his biggest joy is not in being the executive director and making all the decisions, it is simply being there for the kids.
Farmy laughs in joy when I ask her about Aydon’s stoke, “Aydon just wants to be the supporting role being the surf dad, taking all of the kids that he can to the beach. Like all of the kids that he can with as many boards as possible. He wants everyone to be able to have the best time of their life. Like, we're always watching him drive down the road. You always know it's Aydon, because you see 10 boards stacked on a car.”
As Farmy continues striving towards her dreams of surf travel, modeling work, and using her brilliant, activist voice to speak out against injustices and advocate for solutions, she maintains an assured sense of self. With a humble sense of pride and joy that she found through surfing and Laru Beya, her influence in Rockaway, Senegal, and surf communities globally will continue to write new narratives. Thanks to the support and mentorship of Laru Beya to believe in herself, Farmy is optimistic that the opportunities to pursue her dreams will continue to arise like waves in the next set.
“Maybe even one day, I’ll ride big waves,” she says.
To continue following the amazing work of Laru Beya, visit @larubeyasurfing . Consider donating to their 501c(3) as they continue to expand their program to serve more kids.
