Ben Clifford – Founder of Surfability
We had the honour of chatting to Ben Clifford the founder of Surfability, a charity that takes disabled children surfing.
Ben begins the conversion telling us about his background.
He tells us about suffering from Dyspraxia, a condition that affects physical co-ordination and how he is determined to not let the condition stop him achieving his goals.
Ben tells us about being a surf coach and about the first time he volunteered helping autistic children surf and how it was an extremely powerful the experience.
This was to be the driving force in following a career working with people suffering from autism.
Whilst working in this area Ben began to wonder how he could take children with other disabilities surfing and the seed was planted.
The chat moves to talking about Surfability as it is today and some of the amazing disabled children he works with every day. Ben describes everyone he works with as “the bravest people he’s ever met”
Lastly, we talk about the incredible building the local community helped fund and that DIY SOS The Big Build built for the charity.
An eco friendly building that has been designed around Ben, his team and the children that come to surf. T
he building makes the transition from land to surf as comfortable as possible for all that use it with specialist changing tables, changing rooms, storage for specialist equipment and adapted surfboards.
After the conversion we had to privilege to help-out on a surf session with the children.
It was a powerful and emotional experience for us. Surf therapy has been proven to have many positive effects and seeing these effects first-hand we realise how important charities like this are.
Please get involved by donating or volunteering.
Day At Surfability
Also the big news this month was not only did we pass 40,000 downloads on the podcast across all platforms , we were also mentioned on Feedspot in the list of to 25 Surf podcasts that you need to listen to in 2021.
[…] He also explains that a percentage of the money customers pay for a program will be donated toSurfability. […]