The Vision: For happy, healthy artisanal fishing communities who are and respected as stewards for their aquatic environments, cultural heritage and wellbeing.

 

The Mission: To create grassroots actionable social & ecological change through audiovisual storytelling from the perspective of small-scale fishing communities.

Coast 2 Coast was established in 2014 when Nicolás Landa Tami, a cinematographer from Lima, Peru, and Emi Koch, a free surfer from San Diego, California met in Lobitos, Peru.

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Emi started the nonprofit, Beyond the Surface International, as a network of surfing for youth empowerment programs, offering virtual and on-the-ground support to organizations around the world. Through the Lobitos Cinema Project and his various projects, Nico facilitated audiovisual workshops for indigenous communities to share their stories through their own documentaries and photo series.

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Inspired by each other's passions, Nico and Emi began traveling the coastlines together, facilitating surfing and storytelling workshops in small-scale fishing villages around the world. Upon witnessing the ocean's collapse and climate change's impacts on the communities and listening to their experiences, Emi and Nico created Coast 2 Coast as a platform for vulnerable, small-scale fishing communities to celebrate their existence and share with the outside world about the unprecedented social and ecological challenges they are facing on a daily basis.