Dave Jenkins loves to surf, certainly a passion he shares with many other people. But it's how he's translated his passion into action that has inspired me. Dave used to work as a doctor in New Zealand and later as a director of corporate health projects in Singapore. While on a surfing holiday from his job in Singapore, Dave visited the Mentawai Islands, a small island group 140 kilometers off the coast of West Sumatra, Indonesia. Upon witnessing the local indigenous people of the Mentawais in extreme poverty and lacking access to basic health care not far from the islands' picturesque surf breaks, he found he couldn't leave them behind without doing something. He was moved to create Surf Aid International, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving primary medical care through a range of public health projects, focusing on issues like malaria control and immunization. The organization also works to improve local educational opportunities, providing scholarships to train Islanders to become medical professionals so that the villages are not forced to rely upon outside care. Surf Aid works exclusively in places like the Mentawais -- poor indigenous communities adjacent to prime surfing destinations.

There are more than forty remote islands in the Mentawai group. Transportation between remote villages is difficult. That's where Dave -- affectionately known as "Dr. Dave" -- and his Surf Aid team come in. They have their own extraordinary take on "house calls," usually making rounds by boat between villages to check up on patients and see if there are new needs. There's nothing glamorous about it. Says Dr. Dave: "We get around in a 16-foot boat with a rented engine. Sometimes [visiting villages] involves wading up forest tracks in the mud."

Recently, I had the chance to ask Dave why Surf Aid is so important to him. He told me that before founding Surf Aid, he was heading down a very comfortable path in his medical career, but that ultimately, it was leaving him with a hollow feeling:

"I took up the challenge of creating Surf Aid initially as a gut reaction to the disparity between my hedonistic experience (not that there's anything wrong with surfing) on a luxury boat, with the sick and dying children who inherit the reefs and waterways we use, often meters away. The contrast plagued me. I knew that with my experience managing health projects both in the private and public health sectors, I could do something. Two years later, after many stressful and sleepless nights, Surf Aid is my passion, my mission, my lifetime commitment to helping these kids. It is a very personal expression of human values, for me and for anyone else who helps."

"My values were and are in the joy and intense satisfaction of giving whatever you can to the education and empowerment of communities with some of the worst infant mortality rates in the world. In the Mentawais, it's as high as 20 to 30 percent."

When he formed Surf Aid, Dave had high hopes that he would tap into something constructive at the core of surfers around the world. "I hoped that if I was prepared to put my career, financial security, and many comforts on the line, that inevitably the soul of surfing would surface and help would come from the surfing community. There are signs that our continual efforts and the quality of our work are being recognized." Some of the biggest individual names in world-class competitive surfing, including Tom Carroll, Jake Paterson, Kelly Slater, and Rob Bain, as well as major surfing product companies like Quiksilver have lent their support to Surf Aid. Dave and his team at Surf Aid say there's always room for more. They take the position that anyone who enjoys surfing has a role to play in helping local people who struggle to survive in the very places where surfers themselves experience so much leisurely pleasure.

After a long year helping families and children in the Mentawais, Dave has recently been able to return home to Auckland, New Zealand to see his own family, gear up again, and reflect on what he's doing. Of Surf Aid, he says: "It's the hardest, most stressful, most wonderful thing I have ever done. It's right up there with having your own kids. I feel lucky to have found a practical way of expressing my most personal of human values."

:: Lee Stebhens

Lee is a journalism student at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia.

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