As we get closer to our first Tus Olas workshop, I keep coming back to partnership because honestly we could not do this work any other way.
Someone asked me recently, "Who are these young people?" which a greattttt question and leads to getting to tell you about my friend Jess, her husband Dustin, and their organization Sal Y roca.
Jess and Dustin
I've gotten to know Jess over the last year or so, and I just really like her and her husband Dustin.
Together they run Sal y Roca, a local organization in La Misión whose mission is to empower youth of Baja through adventure, education, and mentorship. Weekly they are taking youth out surfing, rock climbing, swim lessons, tutoring, leader training, and have open doors for youth to just come on by. I've seen their mission lived out firsthand through one of their programs, summer surf Saturdays, and it is seriously one of the best mornings you could imagine.
What Jess and Dustin have built is far beyond a program, t's a community. The icebreakers are intentional, the leaders they're raising up are trusted with real responsibility and real room to grow, the warmups, the conversations, the time in the water, none of it is accidental. It's the fruit of years of consistency and care.
It's literal trust in motion. These young people trust that they can try something new,something a little scary, something fun, because they've watched Jess and Dustin show up for them wipeout after wipeout, fall after fall, week after week.
That's the foundation Tus Olas hopes to build from. We're not coming into La Misión to create something that wasn't already there. We're coming alongside people who have been faithfully showing up long before we arrived.
Abundance over Scarcity
In the nonprofit world, it's easy to slip into a scarcity mindset…the sense that we need to be the ones with the answer, the resource, the new program. I understand the instinct, it's just not how we want to operate.
Abundance means starting from the belief that the answers, the relationships, and the care are often already present in a community. Our job isn't to import something different or necessarily new, it's to recognize the incredible people already doing incredible work, and to walk alongside them.
That's exactly what this partnership is. When Jess, Dustin and I talked about Tus Olas, Jess asked if itcould be something we did with a group of girls she's already been walking alongside it was such an easy yes.
Who Are These Young People?
The girls we'll spend the day with are from La Misión, a small coastal community just outside Ensenada. La mision is a bit of a ranchy place, super resilient, with a deep sense of community. Like most communities, it also holds real challenges: many of the girls are navigating single parent households, limited consistent support at home, and questions about education, work, and identity earlier than most kids have to.
That's not the most interesting or important thing about them. What's true of every one of these girls is that they carry gifts, a story, and strength that this world needs and Sal y Roca has spent years creating a space where that gets to show up. Our hope is simply to add to that space, not define them by the identity of where they are from.
What We're Actually Hoping For
Tus Olas isn't about anyone walking away "healed" after one day. Real transformation doesn't work that way, and we're not pretending it does.
What we hope for is a catalyst a day that gives everyone new language for their own experience, a little more clarity on their own story, stronger connection with each other, and a clearer sense that people aren't problems to be fixed or burdens to carry.
We get to practice that first, in real time, through a partnership Sal Y Roca who are already living it out every single Saturday in the water. I know that the relation will not end after this pilot. I am so looking forward to continuing to learn alongside Jess and I am really looking forward to sharing more as we go.
I’d really encourage you to go follow along with their work. It’s so needed and so cool!
