Coast 2 Coast is a Peruvian nonprofit that combines investigation with imagination, working with rural students from small-scale fishing villages using storytelling tools + participatory research approaches for these young learners to explore and communicate their communities’ importance for sustainable futures.

Partnering with local schools, social projects, environmental nonprofits, and community-run organizations in small-scale fishing (SSF) communities, Coast 2 Coast enables rural students to explore their ancient oceans and ancestral villages as resilient researchers and skilled communicators, using transmedia tools, community-based participatory research approaches, place-based education and impact storytelling techniques to illustrating their SSF’s importance for healthy aquatic social-ecological systems and sustainable futures.  

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

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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

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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

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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.