About Share The Wave
The root idea of Share The Wave was initially born from the willingness to share the joy and benefits of surfing with others, especially children who wouldn’t have access to that sport otherwise. It all officially started in September 2017, when Share The Wave was legally founded as a non-profit organization under Swiss law and as the result of a Swiss-Peruvian collaboration.
Our vision and mission at Share The Wave is to share happiness, experience, knowledge from and about the sea, and our love for the ocean. That is why we use surfing as a tool to connect our 3 points of focus towards sustainable development: social empowerment, cultural identity, and environmental awareness. We are principally working in the World Surfing Reserve of Huanchaco, Peru, while also being active in Switzerland.
Meet Share The Wave founders
Eduardo Mateo Valderrama Piminchumo
Born and raised in Huanchaco, Peru, Mateo is a self-taught surfer who started riding waves at the age of 15, by helping out at a local surf school in exchange for borrowing a surfboard for a few hours. Since then, he has dedicated many years to personally facilitating the access to the sea to local children, through teaching them swimming and surfing, as well as providing them with surf equipment.
After traveling to Washington D.C. in 2015 for the Smithsonian Foundation’s Folk Festival about Peru’s culture, where he was representing and sharing about Huanchaco’s cultural identity of the iconic “caballito de totora” (reed watercraft), he came to the realization that there was a need to promote this local and national cultural heritage, not only internationally, but also locally, in order to ensure its continuity through time. That, with his passion for sharing his love for the ocean and surfing, set the base of Share The Wave’s essence.
Roxane Borruat
Coming from a landlocked country, Switzerland, her love and interest for the ocean might have seemed peculiar or surprising to some. This didn’t stop her from completing a Master’s degree in Marine Biology nor from surfing, thanks to her travels. Her interests are centered around the marine environment and its conservation, and aim to find and promote more sustainable, but socio-economically viable uses and interactions with the ocean. Subsequently, she has had a growing interest for finding practical solutions to the global waste issue and hence for promoting environmental actions and citizenship, as well as sustainable living at the individual scale.
Roxane was first brought to Peru for an internship, during which she fell in love with the Peruvian waves but unfortunately noticed the waste and contamination problems of the country. This gave rise to the environmental project of Share The Wave and its particular focus on single-use plastic and marine litter.