
Coast 2 Coast is a Peruvian community-based nonprofit that weaves investigation with imagination, engaging young learners and rural educators in small-scale fishing villages to discover, thrive, and shape positive change for epic futures.
Participatory Audiovisual Storytelling
Learners co-create creative narratives that mobilize the knowledge they've gathered in the form of fantastic stories expressed through their imaginations, grounded in science, and informed by their local contexts.
.png)
Imagination
Youth-led Participatory Action Research
YPAR is an innovative approach to positive youth and community development in which young people gain tools and training to conduct systematic research to explore their lives, their communities, and the institutions intended to serve them.
Investigation





Enchantment is the piece of the puzzle we add to systems change. We provide tools, mediums, and spaces to foster this embodied encounter that connects one in an affirmative way to existence. We offer experiences where we see ordinary places or things in such a way that triggers an emotional and experiential being-in-the-world learning moment. In turn, enchantment establishes relations between peoples and places and significantly expands our understanding of time and space beyond the self. Cultivating these magic moments is key to our sustainability.
LATEST WORKSHOPS


"Acid Water" /// Documentary /// Trivandrum, India

Mural /// Talara, Peru

International Coastal Cleanup /// Ocean Conservancy /// Manori, India

"Henry" /// Short Video /// Lobitos, Peru

“One Day with a Fisherman” /// Stop-Motion Animation /// Lobitos, Peru

“Mar Infinito” /// Stop-Motion /// San Bernardo del Viento, Colombia
LATEST PROGRAM:
Vietnam | 2019-2020
Through a Fulbright-National Geographic Storytelling Scholarship, Coast 2 Coast collaborated with the community of Mũi Né in Southern Vietnam for five months. Local kids, teachers, and community members explored the multifaceted ways fish intersected with their well-being and their community's future. Sailing and swimming lessons were an integral part of the program as another capacity and relationship-building piece.

Latest Festival
Learn more about Festival Somos Mar, our participatory audiovisual and creative arts festival that travels to schools in coastal and inland fishing villages (a.k.a Talleres Somos Ríos) and engages young learners and rural educators in exploring their built and natural surroundings as researchers and storytellers.

ABOUT US
For the past decade, we've immersed ourselves in seaside communities from Mexico to India experiencing climate change, marine degradation, and overdevelopment. We've seen the remarkable, the tragic, and the auspicious through the eyes of local youth in fishing villages on the verge of collapse. We believe in the power of stories as a bridge to reach people and emotionally connect. Beyond the facts, we provide a pathway for the faces, names, and characters who depend on the ocean the most for their survival to share their side of the story before it's too late.
SUPPORT
Make a one-time or monthly donation to fund our participatory transmedia workshops, programs, and festivals! Coast 2 Coast is an initiative of Beyond the Surface, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and your donation is tax-deductible within the guidelines of U.S. law.



WHY?
For young people in small-scale fishing villages, there is a lack of quality educational opportunities adapted to rural reality and focused on practical issues within students' marine and built environments leading to low retention rates, out-migration, and less adaptive capacity to address fisheries scarcity, ocean degradation, coastal development, climate change, and other anthropologic stressors threatening their sustainable futures.
One in 10 people rely on fish for their economic and nutritional security. Most live in the Tropical Majority of countries located in the Global South. Small-scale and artisanal fisheries act as buffers against basic human insecurities such as hunger and extreme poverty. Fish-dependent families are on the frontlines — the coastlines — of ocean conservation and rural community development. Yet, they are often sidelined from critical dialogues between international environmental and economic actors who frame the strategies for the ocean's future. The problem is that current agendas undervalue human security objectives and, in doing so, erode cultural heritage, gender relations, social capital, ecosystem services, human rights, and the essential requisite of providing both livelihoods and affordable, nutrient-packed food for those who count on it the most.