Coast 2 Coast is a nonprofit that combines investigation with imagination using participatory storytelling tools and research approaches for young learners and local educators in small-scale fishing villages to shape epic futures.
Partnering with local schools, social projects, environmental nonprofits, and community-run organizations in small-scale fishing (SSF) communities, Coast 2 Coast engages rural youth in exploring their ancient waters and ancestral villages as resilient researchers and skilled communicators. Students and local educators gain and contribute to a kaleidoscopic understanding of their aquatic social-ecological systems and shape positive changes in their lives for bright, sustainable futures. Students learn how to use transmedia tools, apply community-based participatory research approaches, and impact storytelling techniques to illustrate their SSF’s importance for healthy aquatic social-ecological systems.
Our transdisciplinary team engages local youth as impact storytellers through photography, photojournalism, comic, stop-motion animation, street art, murals, filmmaking, and novel “edutainment” weeklong workshops, 6-month programs, and touring school festivals that foster digital literacy, geospatial knowledge, entrepreneurship, and awareness around the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication, or the SSF Guidelines, the first international instrument to protect artisanal fisheries.
Guided by the SSF Guidelines, local students identify their fishing villages’ strengths, investigate changes, daylight challenges, and brainstorm potential solutions. Participants co-create their own stories rooted in traditional knowledge, fortified by science, and expressed through students’ imaginations that highlight their ocean and community as a marine social-ecological system. Through partnerships, we work to implement these youth-driven, community-based solutions for healthy seas and SSF communities.
One to Two Weeks
One Small-Scale Fishing Community
We facilitate photography, mural, film, stop-motion, and other media workshops with local schools and nonprofits that address strengths and challenges.
Four to Six Months
One Small-Scale Fishing Community
We co-design with local partners a series of audiovisual workshops that take a deep dive into a community's natural and cultural heritage for positive change.
Four to Six Months
Five Small-Scale Fishing Communities
We travel as an audiovisual and creative arts festival stopping in local schools along a stretch of coastline to provide students a platform for dialogue.
Learn more about Festival Somos Mar, our participatory audiovisual and creative arts festival that travels to schools in coastal and inland fishing villages (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.