By Joel Vanderlee for PaddleAway.today
March 2018
Crowded around the dinner table with a group of friends, people love to reminisce about the good old days of sitting behind a desk in elementary school. Remember chatting with the other kids, waiting impatiently for the teacher to impart whatever knowledge was planned for the day? Field trips, school plays, musical performances, team sports – all the lessons that made a lasting impression felt personal to us because we took an active role in our own education.
All over the globe, people work tirelessly to help teach the world’s youth about the importance of environmental care and safety. Unfortunately, these lessons seem to have difficulty making an impact when being taught from the monotony of the average classroom. As a child, would you care about learning about environmental health while only staring at the grass outside the classroom window? Taking notice of this trend and wanting to get kids more involved, the first SUPKids program was initiated in 2014 in Queensland, Australia. The program was designed to help teach kids ages 5-12 about water safety and environmental health by using Stand Up Paddle Boarding to physically experience the wonder of their aquatic surroundings.
SUPKids ballooned after that first successful mission, opening up new programs and delivering education to some of the most remote communities in Australia. In 2015, SUPKids travelled to Thailand to team up with the renowned Starboard SUP, whose strong focus on achieving environmental sustainability through water sports has helped to launch SUPKids worldwide. Since that time SUPKids has steadily continued to grow, teaching their programs to an increasingly diverse group of qualified SUP instructors and setting up SUPKids schools across the planet.
Despite teaching the SUPKids programs, many of these instructors offer numerous other types of SUP lessons. PaddleAway.today, a certified paddle board and SUPKids school just outside of Calgary, strives to show that SUP is not just for children, but for people of all ages and abilities. PaddleAway.today focuses on the physical and mental benefits derived from SUP, whether you want a full-body workout, a relaxing paddle downstream, or want to rejuvenate with some SUP Yoga, it’s never too early or too late to get yourself on a board and to make a difference.
Unifying these various schools and programs is one unbreaking commonality – passion. Just think, would you feel more passionate about environmental health while slouching behind that desk in school, or while gliding over the waves on a paddleboard and watching the sunset? SUPKids fights valiantly to instil positive, lasting values about respect for our environmental and personal wellbeing. This passion can be ignited in anyone, at any age, at any time, at any place; all you need is the will to get your feet wet. Grab a paddle, the water’s fine!
For more information about our lessons and SUPkids programs contact us at www.PaddleAway.today
