JARO, a non-profit organization named by Founder and President Chris Osuna in honor of his deceased brother Jorge Alberto Rocha Osuna, will be hosting a free surfing lesson for National City youth at Tourmaline Surf Park from 8 a.m. to noon on Aug. 21.
“Right around the fifth anniversary of my brother passing, around 2019, we saw a lot of people doing positive things in the community and we thought we could get together and give back to the community like my brother would have. Coming back and trying to get kids on the straight and narrow was a passion of his so we decided that’s what our mission was going to be,” Osuna said.
JARO, under Osuna’s direction, has now held several of the free surf lessons with an increasingly larger attendance— more kids turn up each time, as do more volunteers.
Osuna partners with an avid surfer and friend, Jonathan Santos Galendez under his own non-profit organization, For the Neighborhood, while he reaches out to the community to identify kids who “need to know there are people in the community who care about their success, who care they have somewhere to go after school, who have a mentor.”
The partnership started, he said, with a conversation on how to get kids surfing and several months later, organizers have had close to 70 kids participate in the free lessons.
“We’ve had an overwhelmingly positive response. Last time, we had 50 or 60 volunteers participate. We screen volunteers for criminal records ahead of time but we’re usually meeting in person for the first time.
Some of these surfers— they start breaking through barriers with kids who might live every day thinking nobody cares and by the end of the day these kids are catching their first wave and asking when they’re going to get to do it again,” Osuna said.
The mild San Diego climate allows for year-round surfing but Osuna is conjuring up other ways to “expose kids to an adventure” that will likely include other sports, assuming kids can get to the events.
“The transportation issue hasn’t been that big of an issue for us. The kids often have a teacher or someone who will drive four-fifths of them out. Somehow they find their way there and they don’t have to bring gear or anything because the surf community brings the boards and suits and they leave it there at the end of the day,” Osuna said.
Ideally, he said, they’d like to keep the partnership with For the Neighborhood and continue surfing as long as weather allows for it, then introduce other outdoor activities.
“Our organization, outside of surfing, year-round we’re trying to get kids into pipelines for mentorship and get them off the street. We’ve also started to connect with coaches and when we hear ‘this kid used to be really involved but hasn’t shown up for two or three years’, we try to reach out to turn the situation around. We’re moving with the tide of the community, addressing things as they come,” Osuna said.
Growing up in National City, he said, it is easy to go down what he calls the ‘wrong path’. Now in Corporate Security, Osuna said he used to work as a deputy in the jail system and “I saw a lot of kids I grew up with on the wrong side of the bars” but believes the outcome of one’s life is not predetermined.
“If you can program kids, show them you are an example of the same adversity they are going through… the message is: put your head down and grind it out. We’re living proof of that,” Osuna said.
For now, he’s seeking out more volunteer surf instructors, foam surfboards and wetsuits.
Visit jaroproject.wixsite.com for more information.
