Panelists - Jon Rose, Fabio Feldman (right of Jon Rose), David De Rothschild (next to Fabio), and Celine Cousteau (far right)

Hey Friends!

In route home from SWU Forum and wanted to send a few pics…

Was really an incredible moment in the Waves For Water journey…

There was an incredibly inspiring range of speakers – Neil Young was an obvious highlight and talked on the first of two panels on day one (was also his 65th birthday) about how we can all make this world a better place…

I spoke (and showed our Amazon video) the second day alongside Fabio Feldman (former Brazilian politician turned environmentalist bad-ass), David De Rothschild, and Celine Cousteau (Jacques granddaughter) – a panel I was deeply humbled and grateful to be a part of…

Then the last and final panel of the symposium spoke shortly after ours… including Sir Bob Geldof giving the final speech. I’ll just say one thing – Sir Bob is an absolute living legend!
His speech was incredibly inspiring and authentic – I’m still reeling from it…

I feel deeply honored to have been able to join Sir Bob, Neil, and the others in this experience… to help them shed light on the positive change thats occurring in our world, and not just the negative we hear about so often.

Thanks for embarking on this journey with me… it really is just the beginning…

Jon

PS – in addition to the 1500 people in the auditorium watching the forum, I was told that the online numbers were roughly 1.5 million unique views each day.

http://en.swu.com.br/

Our Amazon video played on the big screen behind our chairs on stage

Neil Young

Sir Bob!!!

Text Giuliano Cedroni & photography Vavá Ribeiro

Jon Rose looks like a regular surf dude: tan skin, pale blue eyes, and a friendly smile on his face. But for over a decade this former WCT top surfer mingled with the ‘Irons’ and ‘Slaters’ of the professional surf circus in search of great waves, trophies, girls and cash. Even though he never made it to the very top, young Jon travelled the world looking for action in the remotest places. His passport is a collection of exotic stamps: Indonesia, Hawaii, South Africa, Brazil, Peru, Tahiti. But knowing he would never make the big-time, Jon retired at the age
of thirty-one.
A bit lost after the dreamy lifestyle of the surf circuit, Jon took inspiration from his father, Jack Rose – who had worked in Africa helping people catch and filter rainwater – and travelled to Sumatra Island, Indonesia, with some simple filters in his backpack. It was during this surf trip, in 2009, that Jon felt a slight shake on his boat – an echo of the 7.6 magnitude earthquake that caused a tsunami killing over 1,000 people, and leaving 100,000 homeless. Surviving without a scratch, Jon decided to go inland to deliver the filters where they were needed. He didn’t know it yet, but this was the birth of Waves 4 Water.
“After helping people in Sumatra, delivering filters and teaching people how to use them, I knew that this is what I wanted to do with my life,” says Jon, comfortably seated in the open garden of Loducca, a fancy advertising agency in São Paulo, Brazil. “We’re the black sheep of NGOs, because we don’t operate like them, buying cars and trucks, spending a lot on infrastructure and personnel, hiring foreigners to do the job. That’s an old model, a ridiculous model, if you ask me. They hire a guy from Ireland to do the transportation in Haiti, and an Australian to do the security in Uganda. Why not the locals?”
Waves 4 Water is an NGO that delivers water filters to people who need them. Whenever there’s a natural disaster, such as the earthquakes in Haiti and Japan, Jon and his two employees go to action. Getting funds from brands like Hurley, a Nike surf subsidiary, or humanitarian organisations such as Red Cross, Jon and his staff buy the filters in the US and fly to the ground-zero areas where they hire local people to help distribute them. “I’ve learned everything from surf,” Jon acknowledges. “Like, how to be able to adapt; to be out of your comfort zone and yet manage to deal with it.”
After dropping a couple dozen filters to people during the flood in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, last January, Jon and photographer Vavá Ribeiro joined forces with a few other surfers such as Guga Ketzer, a creative director from Loducca ad agency, and set up an expedition this summer to the Amazon
River. Their mission? To check the quality of drinking water for the people living around the largest water reserve on the globe.
“What the Amazon people don’t realise is that the water from the river is not clean,” says Jon. “At least not clean enough to
drink it. So we got there, filtered a few glasses and showed them the results. They were astonished.” Jon and his small team have delivered over 100,000 filters so far to places like Kenya, Uganda, Pakistan, Indonesia, Japan, Brazil and Haiti. “The idea is to get in, act, and get out as soon
as we can, so the local authorities don’t even have the time to tell us what we can and what we cannot do,” says Jon about their guerrilla approach. “Sometimes we have sixty people working with us and it blows me away!” Each filter delivered by Waves 4 Water costs fifty US dollars
and provides clean water to 100 people per day for up to five years. The device can be used with any plastic bucket by making a whole in the bottom and the filters are easy to transport. Jon may have already worked side by side with the Red Cross and the UN this year, but he plans to grow his outreach significantly in the future. “One in six people still don’t have access to clean water,” says Jon, “and that’s ridiculous.”
wavesforwater.org

You can download the full PDF article here

Rose in Port-au-Prince, Haiti Photographer: Mark Chioniere

Bright Idea: DIY Disaster Relief

By: WILLIAM WHEELER

In September 2009, California surfer Jon Rose was sailing toward the island of Sumatra, carrying ten water filters that he planned to deliver to a rural community while enjoying a surf trip in Indonesia. Rose was looking to move on from his career as a Quiksilver-sponsored surfing pro. Inspired by his father’s nonprofit, RainCatcher, which teaches African villagers how to filter rainwater, he hit upon the idea of recruiting surfers to deliver water filters in their travels through developing countries. He thought it would be a pet project. Then, on his first mission, an earthquake hit nearby, devastating the city of Padang. “It was like divine intervention,” Rose says. “Like, ‘OK, this is your life. This is what you’re doing.’ ”

Rose’s organization, Waves for Water, has since provided some 2.5 million people access to safe water, delivering more than 75,000 simple portable filters, which can be used with local water supplies and whatever buckets are at hand, cutting out the need to dig wells or use purification chemicals. The group is one part viral campaign—looking for volunteers to buy and distribute filters abroad—and one part action squad, running relief and improvement programs in Haiti, Brazil, Pakistan, Indonesia, Kenya, Uganda, India, and Liberia. It’s a style that Rose refers to as “black ops” or “guerrilla humanitarianism,” which he defines as working “under the radar and around the red tape.” That means a lean budget and a skeleton staff that coordinates with locals on the ground and moves into and out of target areas quickly.

Those years he spent far off the beaten path prepared him for his new job, Rose says. “It’s sort of the same way I felt about surfing as a kid,” he says. “But it’s greater.”

View actual article here 

Waves For Water was recently contacted by a group in Brazil that produces a giant music festival each year just outside of Sao Paulo, Brazil, called SWU – The letters stand for Starts With You. It is a festival on par with the ones we are so familiar with in the US such as Coachella & Lallapalooza. Some of this years headliners include – Kanye West, Faith No More, Snoop Dogg, Stone Temple Pilots, Black Eyed Peas, Duran Duran, among others. But the difference in SWU is it has a purpose beyond the  music. The entire thing is a sustainability/awareness campaign, with music as the common thread. The concept is simple – attract an entire demographic with great live music, but while you have them there, TURN THEM ON…! Shift their consciousness and create an army of educated soldiers in the fight for a new, more conscious, reality… It’s all about information – once you are informed, you are responsible… once you are in touch with your responsibilities, you have a better chance of carrying them out and actually helping to change existing paradigms that are either outdated or simply broken.

So, SWU walks their talk… and how they do so is by partnering with organization or groups that they feel are worthy of exposing to the massive audience at their festival. When they partner, it means that they co-create (and sponsor) a community driven action with each partner. In the case of W4W, through our program, they wanted to collaborate on a project for a specific slum on the outskirts of Sao Paulo that, in its first phase, would provide 900 families with clean water. Their concept is brilliant – execute a real action with their partners months before the festival… do a huge media push around each action to get people acquainted, and then physically showcase each project at the festival through a range of mediums – build outs, videos, live demonstrations, etc…

We completed the first phase of the slum project with them recently and it was incredible. It’s all about implementing change on the ground level and turning on the next generation in the process… I even had my girlfriends son, Dylan, come along to help and see first hand the harsh realities that many people face, day in and day out, around the world.

SWU was a flawless partner… and really helped get the message out afterwards on a national level… And along with the unwavering support (since the inception of this project) by the Hurley crew in Brazil, it was by and far one of the smoothest projects we’ve ever done – anywhere! I’ve attached images from the project…

Lastly, they have asked me to speak at their global sustainability symposium during the festival… I said yes, of course… and am completely honored to do so. The other speakers include Neil Young, Bob Geldof, and Donna Karen… to name a few.

Here’s a link to learn about the event – http://swu-admin.swu.com.br/en/

Wish us luck!

HLN Interview with Jon Rose from Waves For Water on Vimeo.

Surfer Jon Rose Talks Waves For Water: MyFoxLA.com

Los Angeles – Professional surfer turned environmentalist Jon Rose’s non-profit organization “Waves for Water” goes all over the world bringing clean water technology to places where water is very difficult to come by.

On Monday Jon who just got back from a trip to the Amazon, talked to us about his group on GDLA.

What can make a difference in what we do is scale. I can put 10 water filters in my bag and save, potentially, thousands of lives. But if I get other people involved, if companies join in, and private donors and sponsors, then I’m going through a lot of the same motions, but scaling up the results.

What dawned on me at one point is that if I shoot for the stars and fall short, I still land on the moon.

I’ve always been somewhat socially conscious, or tried to be, though as a pro-surfer I had a pretty self-indulgent lifestyle. When my dad got involved in the water cause, I supported him in his passion. I saw what he was doing with Rain Catcher, the organization he started, and thought it was great. He worked in Africa, focusing on developing simple ways to catch rainwater and teaching people how to do that themselves so they didn’t have to walk five miles to a pond.

About six years later, when I was looking for a way to transition out of my surfing career, I thought, I can do that, too. I’d seen the need for it in all the places I’d surfed. Waves for Water was born out of realizing I could go to all the places I know from surfing and help. If I stuck to that list I’d be busy until I’m dead. That felt like a simple plan. Then the project transformed into more of a special ops mindset of providing urgent relief – not always in direct response to a disaster, like an earthquake, but in places that are disastrous day after day. We call this guerilla humanitarianism.

I tend to go full throttle. There are days when I’m more tired than others, but I still love it. It helps that my time as a pro-surfer gave me experience in learning to adapt to different cultures and traditions and in dealing with what we encounter when we’re out of our comfort zone.

When you’re on the right path you can’t make a wrong turn. I have a lot of passion for what I do. I do it because I love it. I’ve always done what I love to do. I’m not going to stop now.

- Jon Rose

http://www.coastmagazine.com/articles/jonrose-1720–.html

Laguna Beach’s Jon Rose had the dream life: a professional free surfer, he was paid to travel the world surfing perfect waves with photographers and videographers in tow. As far as jobs went, it was about as carefree as you could get. There was one downside, however. It just so happens that most of those idyllic tropical settings where perfect waves break off white sand beaches surrounded by green jungles are set in Third World countries. This is where people are often in desperate need of life’s basic necessities, one of which is clean, drinkable water. So, after an all-day dream session in perfect waves, Rose would often witness people literally fighting for their lives every day, sick and dying thanks to contaminated water sources. So now, in his “retirement,” Rose founded Waves for Water and is working harder than ever to help the 3.3 million people who die each year from illness born from lack of clean water – a child dies every 15 seconds.

He calls that statistic a shame on humanity, and for good reason. “We have the solution and it’s not hard to get clean water to people. In fact, it’s very easy,” he says, referring to the simple, portable $50 filters he uses in his quest. Each filter, along with an everyday bucket and piece of hose, is able to provide clean water for 100 people per day for five years. And lest you doubt that, consider his successes over just the past few years. He’s partnered with Sean Penn, Nike and Hurley, to name but a few, along with the United Nations, and brought filter systems to families and villages in Haiti, Pakistan, Indonesia, Africa, Samoa, Brazil, and Japan. Already, he’s changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

And he wants you to help. But again, he says, don’t worry, saving lives is easy and cheap. In fact, you do it while on vacation. As a Clean Water Courier, you just stick a filter in your luggage when you’re going to a place that needs clean water, find a local figurehead and usually he or she does the rest. Then, you hit the bar and feel really great about yourself over that sunset margarita. Now that’s a great way to spend retirement.

Was it hard to give up your career as a professional surfer?
It was an easy decision, actually. I had a 13-year career and about six years into that career I stopped doing the tour, so I had seven more years, the bigger part of my career, just being a professional free surfer, exploring and adventuring. I traveled to get photos in magazines and [appeared in] videos. I made the transition to humanitarian work a couple years ago. But those years were fun and gave me a resourcefulness that translates into what I do now.

Which is?
I Started Waves for Water in April of 2009 as a pet project. I was trying to figure out what my life’s next chapter would be. My father was already doing work in this area, teaching people how to catch rainwater in Africa [Rain Catcher Organization]. He was really involved in it, spending a lot of time in Kenya, and I was supportive but it wasn’t my passion. So I thought I’d go to all the surf spots that I’ve been where I saw a need for fresh water and education. I figured I’d do what my father was doing in Africa in these Third World surf destinations.

And your first “mission” turned out to be bigger than you thought.
Yes, I went to do my first Waves for Water mission to the Mentawai Islands in Indonesia. I took 20 filters for an area I was going to visit in the second half of my trip. But when I was on the first part of the surf trip in Sumatra, the 6.9 earthquake hit. We were safe because we were in a boat anchored off Padang, just miles from the epicenter, but it changed my plans because [the earthquake victims] needed the filters badly. And that incident set the pace for the next couple years. I saw first-hand how practical, easy and needed these solutions are, especially in that kind of situation, where so much death and destruction is happening so fast. But when you have these assets and can stop some of that from happening it’s a pretty amazing feeling. Especially when you don’t even feel like you’re doing much. It’s not hard. The hard part is the choice to do it.

I’ve read that fresh water may be the next oil, in the sense that it will be so needed that wars will be fought over it. Do you think that’s true?
Sure. The reason wars are fought over it and will continue to be fought over it is because you can’t live without it. You can’t survive more than three days without water; it’s of the utmost necessity. And any capitalistic-minded person tries to find something that’s needed and capitalize on it, so there’s that, along with the corruption that goes along with it. But basically, the earth provides enough water for everyone to survive. There’s plenty of water, it’s just not clean. I go to places where people have water sources, but it’s dirty. We give them simple solutions on how to clean it.

You say the solution is easy. What exactly do you mean?
Look, it boils down to this. There are things like cancer and AIDS and other devastating diseases. And we spend so much time trying to beat those, but we can’t. If you have a relative that gets cancer, you could have all the best doctors in the world and still lose them. Water’s not like that. Don’t get me wrong, we should definitely focus on those other diseases, but here’s something – disease, illness and death from water contamination – that we can beat. And it’s not that hard; in fact it’s easy. So if a five-year-old kid dies from lack of clean water, it’s not only a tragedy, but a complete shame. That’s why it’s so baffling to me that so many people, especially kids, are still dying.

Tell us about the filters.
The filters are about $50. Then all you need is a bucket or a trash can and a short length of hose. The filter is a cartridge that’s filled with thousands of microfibers that the water passes through. It’s basic; gravity does the work. So there are virtually no limitations on where you can use them. All you need is a filter, something to contain water with and gravity. That provides enough clean water for 100 people per day for five years. That’s why I say, when you do the math it’s baffling that so many people are sick or dying because of contaminated water.

Jon Rose explains his water filters to a group in need of clean drinking water.

Some people will have a hard time believing it’s that easy to change lives. How about an example of a simple mission that had big results.
I traveled to Brazil when they had the worst floods in [recorded] history. I had a corporate partner from Brazil and just bought as many filters as I could with their support. I took 200 filters down in my personal luggage and with that I got 20,000 people clean water. That was just me, alone. I’m not trying to boast, I’m trying to show how easy it is.

Is that what you mean when you describe the project as guerrilla humanitarianism?
Yes, that’s what it is. Because I don’t come from a traditional humanitarian background and didn’t grow up in that model – Peace Corps, government agencies, etc. – I just come at everything with a pure common sense approach. I think that makes sense to the average person, but you’d be surprised at how much the existing model is not based on that common sense approach. There’s a lot of red tape, there’s a lot of bureaucracy, there’s a lot of stuff that seems to stop the bottom line from happening, which is getting these solutions to people who need them quickly and efficiently.

Still, you have worked within the system at times.
Yes, I’ve done it successfully. I’ve partnered with the U.N. in Haiti so I’ve had projects with the biggest organizations in the world and I’ve also taken 200 filters by myself somewhere, so I’ve dealt with it on all levels but I always come at it with an attitude of: Let’s get in there and get it done before anyone can complain about how we’re doing it. I see Waves for Water as kind of like black ops. When you see the need and for whatever reason the existing model in place isn’t working, we’ll come in, solve the problem and get out.

You worked with Sean Penn in Haiti as well. How did that come about?
Sean Penn saw what we did in Sumatra and wondered if that would be viable in Haiti, so he called me when he was forming his group in Haiti. A few days later we went to Haiti and we worked together for almost a year. In fact, our projects in Haiti are still going. I have an apartment down there and spend a week out of every month there and Sean’s down there a lot also. So far, we’ve brought over 100,000 people clean water.

You also just did a mission in Japan. How was that?
It was the real deal. We were there to help get people clean water in this interim period while the government tries to figure out how to rebuild. There are a lot of communities that are wiped out and still don’t have power or sanitation. So we flew there with a few hundred filters in our luggage. I had a few contacts from surfing there, so we just filled a van and drove all through those neighborhoods in the north giving filters out to families. It felt good to ease their pain at least a little bit.

And you’ve made it easy for anyone to practice guerrilla humanitarianism.
Right. Clean Water Couriers is our version of a volunteer model. We’re trying to really drive home the fact that it’s so easy to help. Anytime you’re traveling you can have a filter, or more, on you and take the initiative to help.

How does it work?
You go to the Clean Water Couriers spot on our website and fill out a submission form and tell us how many filters you want to buy and we send you them and tell you how to distribute them.

And how do people distribute the filters? Is that part hard?
No. Usually, I would suggest finding a figurehead in the village or town, like a church or a school or even a man who seems to really care about his community. Then let them choose the best places for the filters; empower the locals. Even in a nicer destination, like a resort in Mexico, say, usually the hired help can be a contact that knows where clean water is desperately needed. They can take the filter and help people. And all you did was bring a filter down. It’s that easy.

Do people in developing countries that have not survived a natural disaster react differently than people who have?
They respond in the same way because every single day is a fight for their life. In some places in Indonesia that I’ve been there’s a 50% infant mortality rate. People walk three miles each way to some seedy little water source that’s totally contaminated. They know it’s contaminated so it’s half a day walking to get it and another half a day gathering firewood to boil it so they don’t die.

Is there a time that stands out as particularly poignant?
There are countless stories. For instance, when I went back to a village months after we had delivered filters, one woman broke down in tears because her baby had been sick her entire life and virtually on the brink of death since she was born and now she was a thriving little human, running around laughing and playing. It’s all because they’re getting clean water.

Why do you think Waves for Water has been so successful?
The model we’ve created is lean and not overly dependent on anything, really. So even though we’ve got partnerships with some of the biggest organizations in the world, I’m not hinging our success on them. The only thing that changes is scale. Of course, the ultimate goal is to get everyone who needs it clean water, so the more money, resources and partners we can get, the closer to that goal we get. But the bottom line is I can always buy 10 filters, stuff them in a backpack, travel somewhere, and give 1,000 people clean water and a new life. Nobody can take that power away from me. That’s a good feeling.

Buy a Filter
Waves for Water has made saving lives truly easy through its Clean Water Courier program. Fifty dollars and a little space in your luggage changes the lives  for 100 people. So leave that extra pair  of socks at home and save some people.
www.wavesforwater.org/store

Professional Surfer Jon Rose on GDLA: MyFoxLA.com

Los Angeles – A month after the killer quake and tsunami hit Japan the area was rattled again by a huge 7.1 aftershock.

On Monday professional surfer and founder of “Waves for Water,” Jon Rose joined us live to talk about his organization, which is helping to bring clean water to Japan and other regions affected by natural disasters.