 Welcome to Hawaii Together on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. I'm Kelea Ikeena, president of the Grassroot Institute. Hawaii is a paradise. It has beautiful people, scenery, and just a wonderful, wonderful environment which can live and grow. And yet did you know that there's also a dark side of paradise? At least many parts of Hawaii have been in the dark for many, many years. One of them was this little town of Wahiawa. I remember growing up and being in Wahiawa from time to time, being told by my mother, don't go down that street because there are bad people there. Well, it wasn't so much that there were bad people there, but there were bad things that happened to people there in those places. She wanted me to stay away as a little boy. But as the years went on, I was saddened to see Wahiawa facing many conditions, homelessness, a lack of employment for people who work there, and a high level of crime. But lo and behold, over the years, something amazing has been happening in that town, especially over the last decade. I'd even use the word transformation. There's a little group that's been responsible for transforming Wahiawa into a place of vibrancy in terms of opportunities to work, dealing with crime, dealing with all kinds of behaviors that used to bring Wahiawa down. And that group is called Surfing the Nation. I'm pleased today to have my long-term friend, Tom Bauer, the president of Surfing the Nation, to talk with us just a little bit about what took place and how it happened. You're going to enjoy meeting him. Tom, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for letting me be a part of this. So glad, Tom. Surfing the Nation has done so much good for Wahiawa and the world. I'm sure our viewers are going to enjoy hearing your stories. But first, tell me a little about you. You're a surfer. I'm one of those surfers from California and just surfed all over the world. What brought you to Hawaii? All kinds of different things, but surfing was one of them. But just helping people was the greatest thing of just giving back to the community. Actually, I was one of those long-haired hippies living in Hawaii in 1968. And then my life radically changed. And I didn't want to be a taker, but I wanted to be a giver. That's great to hear. And you have a wonderful wife, Cindy, and four beautiful daughters. Well, you know, tell me a little bit about how you found Wahiawa originally, at least a decade ago. Well, it's interesting. Actually, a friend heard from a friend that they were selling a bar there and some apartments, and so that was the beginning. And of course, when I used to go surf on the North Shore, I went into Wahiawa and I said, like, this is the last place I would ever want to live. What were the conditions up there? The conditions were really bad. You know, there was the bar. There was the 24-hour porn shop. There was the liquor store, the strip club with the brothel in the back that a lot of people don't even know about. And a huge amount of this was clustered together right at the main entrance to Wahiawa. Right. It's kind of that. That was Ohai Street. What took place at night over there? Well, there was a lot of prostitution, drugs, you know, and I think anybody who's a long-term Hawaiian and lives in Hawaii, they know that to live and be in Ohai Street is really dangerous, you know, drugs, prostitution, sex, murders. And a lot of people called it Blood Alley because it was just not notorious. It also serviced the military base that was right across the highway from it, Cofield Barrack. I remember being told by my mother when we lived in Wahiawa, just never go into that little area at the beginning of it because there were things taking place there she wanted to shield me from. What was it like for young people who lived in the area, teenagers? It was pretty crazy. And also, like even when we moved in there, because I have four daughters, if somebody asked my daughters where they live, and they said they live in Wahiawa, and then they told them Ohai Street, they would really get upset about that because they just thought of it. But it's really amazing how the transformation has come, and you just go in there and you just start loving and you start finding the needs in the community and solving problems. Well, you mentioned earlier that you went up there and you saw that there was a bar for sale, and that kind of started the work that you do up there. Tell me a bit about what happened. You bought the bar? Yeah, so we bought the bar, the top hat bar, a very famous bar, with the apartments in the back, and next to it was a 24-hour porn shop. And it was interesting, we just kind of like just laid our hands on that porn shop and just loved them and didn't do anything inappropriate. There was no wall between us and them. And then we had this youth group come and they just kind of, you know, were singing and put their hands in paint on the wall. And like three months after they left, the owner called my wife and said, hey, I really feel that I'm to get out of the business and I want surf in the nations to buy the porn shop. Are you interested? Of course, my wife said, well, we don't want the porn business, but we want the building. And that's how we purchased that. And then next to that was a liquor store with a house in the back. And then next to that was another, it was called the, what was it called? It was called the Texas Bar. And in the back it had a brothel and it had apartments. And independently of each other, we went to them and they all wanted to sell all at the same time. So we were able to buy, you know, half a city block in Oahuwa. My goodness. Now that's phenomenal. So what did you start doing with these buildings once you bought them? Well, we just, we brought in volunteers and we just started just fixing them up every single day. I think even now every day we get a little further and just, you know, restoring, building them, painting them and, you know, bringing transformation to Oahuwa. So what are you operating up there right now? Well, we operate, you know, we have a training, what we call it, an internship, where what we do is we invite people from all over the world to come and to see what we're doing. So we basically teach them to give back to their community. So everything that we do in Oahuwa is transferable. So we do. Underprivileged kids were the largest private distributor of food in conjunction with the Hawaii Food Bank. And, of course, I've served on the neighborhood boards. My wife, she's on the, you know, the Leila Lahuwa High School Board of Directors there, works with the Food Bank. So we're constantly giving back to bring transformation. Well, that's incredible. So you're the largest distributor with Hawaii Food Bank of food. Yeah, in connection with them. That's incredible. Now who is it that you actually feed up there? I mean, who are the people? Well, we feed in Kalih if you've ever seen like on Vineyard. So you're based in Oahuwa and you go all the way across the island to Kalih to distribute food. We've been doing this for almost, well, maybe 20 some years. Yeah, and so we have just volunteers who come and then we do it. We have a pantry in Oahuwa. And then we do a distribution like every other Wednesday, right there in the back on actually on Oahuwa Street. You know, recently I went through Oahuwa and I was just stunned at how clean and how industrious and how just lively the little area that you've moved into looks compared to the way it used to be many, many years ago. Tell me a little bit about the people. I'm sure you've seen lives transformed both in your organization with volunteers and also neighbors. Yeah, there's this, well, there's so many, but you know, the thing is that there's so many different organizations that are helping to bring transformation. So you're kind of a nexus. You bring people together. Well, we're just part of something that's bigger. So now all of a sudden you've got investors, you've got like, you've got the blue zone, you've got dots, you've got all these different organizations in Oahuwa that are now really making a concentrated effort to really make change in that. So it's really a team effort. You know, so all the people in the heights, so sometimes it gets a little confusing because there's lower Oahuwa and there's the heights. And so when you talk about Oahuwa, you don't want to say Oahuwa in general is just, you know, the Ohio Street area. It's really all the great things that are happening up in the heights. And all the great people that live there that are now giving back to that part of it. So it's a community effort. That's great to hear. Now, your organization is a nonprofit organization. Yeah, humanitarian. And it's based upon character building. While many of you who operate it have a deep faith, it's not a religious organization per se. It's a character building organization that brings volunteers together. How many volunteers do you generally have? Oh, well, we just had, like, this semester, we had, like, you know, from up to 75. And where do they come from? They come from all over the world. So they hear about what we're doing, and then what we do is we teach them character, and then they go back, and everything we do, they can do back in their hometown. So that's to serve the homeless, the poor, the needy, or find out basically what the need is in their town and then try to solve it. That's incredible. And so in a sense, you model a type of community building to take across the world. That's what's so exciting about it. It's all transferable. You can duplicate it. So there's all these communities all around the world. So like right now, we're just, my wife and a team is in Egypt. And actually what we're doing is we're having a surf camp right there on the Mediterranean Agami. And we started a little surf thing there, and so they're doing a surf camp there right now as we're talking. Well, you know, I want to come back during the second half of our program today to talk more about your adventures across the world because you've grown from simply dealing with people in Hawaii now traveling through your Surfing the Nations program to how many countries? Well, I've been to 100. 100 countries. In fact, after the break, don't go away because we'll talk also about adventures that Surfing the Nations has had in North Korea. But for a little bit more, a couple more minutes, let's talk about Wahiawa. One of the things that you believe is important is for people to get beyond the stage where they need a handout. Although we have to have a safety net for people when they reach the bottom, what you try to do is bring people into a productive lifestyle that has a level of entrepreneurship. Tell me a bit about that. So one of our key things, our components is really to teach business. So that's why we've started businesses there. So we have a coffee shop. So we actually, we invite the homeless to come in. They can come in there. They don't even have to buy anything. And what we're doing is we're just loving on them to show them that we believe in them. And then we have people from all over the world and we're teaching them how to do business. We have like an antique shop. And then we have other shops that we're leasing out. So there's an ice cream shop. There's a surf shop. There's also a sandwich shop. And so these are all helping. And so we've got people from all over the world to see what we're doing, that you can go into business and actually make an impact in your community. I understand. Even recently, one of your volunteers was a graduate of Harvard Business. Right. And she had some observations to make about what you're doing. Well, I asked her, I said, like, tell me what you learned at Harvard. And she said, number one, every nonprofit should be self-sustaining. So that really, really just went to my heart. So our goal is to go into business and give back. And that's what's happening. These young people can see that, hey, it's not about taking. It's about giving back. Now, I remember way in the beginning, you and I used to get together and talk. Surfing the Nations was a dream and it had a budget of $0. Yeah, $0. Started with nothing. And now today, what's an annual budget look like for surfing the Nations? Oh, don't even ask me that. That's a big question, but it's a lot. And I think that that's part of our success. It's not only investing in people, but it's investing in real estate and it's investing to give back. So I believe that my purpose is not only to invest in myself, but it's for the purpose of investing in others. And that's what we're doing and why we're giving back. That's an important philosophy to teach business entrepreneurship. It's important for people not only to have programs that are sustainable, but in their own lives, develop personal financial sustainability. So is that one of the things you teach or still finance? What do you teach your people? So what we do is we have a school that basically teaches you how to go into business, how to start it, what it takes. So you do a business plan and then what it does is it helps them to have a mindset because you've really got to change the mindset of this generation to believe that they can be successful. So there's more of a negative than a positive and what we do is that we believe that everybody needs encouragement and very few know how to give it. When it comes to business, that's part of our goal is to encourage them to go into business for the purpose of then investing in others. Have some of the people launched businesses that are sustaining themselves? Well, we have some. Actually, right now we've been going to Bangladesh and maybe we can talk about that, but we're trying to help some of the Bengali boys that didn't know English and they will tell the story, but we're helping them to go into business. Well, that's great to hear. When people come to Wahiwa, where should they go if they want to learn more about the little town that you're starting up? Well, they can go to the Surfer's Coffee right there on Cam Highway, but our offices are in the back. We have a two-story office building, a brand new one. We actually tore down the brothel and built the two-story office building there. We have like a conference room. We're putting in a dance studio. We have an art studio there as well and it's a way for us to give back to... You know, to meet all the needs of the community there. Did you have any opposition as you started your endeavor? Well, the opposition was just a misunderstanding of who we are and what we're going to do and the things that the Wahiwa, the lower Wahiwa has such a bad reputation that it affects the people who live in the heights. So, what we've tried to do is try to not bring that negative side to Wahiwa because we just believe that Wahiwa is the most amazing town, where we're all working together as a team. Well, that's great to hear. Well, when we come back for the break, as I promised our viewers, I'm going to ask you a bit about the worldwide ambassadorship of Serving the Nations and you've gone to over 100 countries. Your wife is there. She's right now in Bangladesh with a team. She's in Egypt. Oh, she's in Egypt. She's in Egypt with a team and looking forward to hearing more about that. My guest today is Tom Bauer, and also Transforming the World. We'll be right back after this. I'm Kili Iakena on the Think Tech Wahi Broadcast Network. Don't go away. Aloha. I'm Mellie James, host of Let's Mana Up. Tuesdays, every other Tuesday, from 11 to 1130. This show is meant to dive into stories of local product entrepreneurs and how they're growing their companies from right here in Hawaii. I'm so thrilled to have our show kicked off and so please join us on Tuesdays at 11 o'clock as we talk to local entrepreneurs and hear their stories. Hey, hello, everyone, and welcome to the Think Tech Wahi Studio. My name is Andrew Lanning. I'm the host of Security Matters Hawaii. We air here every Tuesday at 10 a.m. Hawaii time, trying to bring you issues about security that you may not know, issues that can protect your family, protect yourself, protect our community, protect our companies, the folks we work with. Please join us and I hope you can maybe get a little different perspective on how to live a little safer. Aloha. Welcome back to Hawaii Together. I'm Think Tech Hawaii. I'm Kelea Iakina with my guest Tom Bauer, president of Serving the Nations. I don't know if you got to see the March 2019 edition of Honolulu Magazine, but it features the work of Serving the Nations in Wahi Wattown. Here's a photo of Tom and his lovely wife, Cindy. Tom, is this in the little cafe that you have up there? There's a little alleyway that we're developed and it's really kind of unique and kind of cute for why it's a good little place and parking in the back. I hope our viewers are able to come up and sample some of your food up there. Now tell me a little bit about the worldwide outreach of Serving the Nations. You've been to over 100 countries but it had to start somehow. What was the genesis of the first country you took Serving to as a form of ambassadorship and goodwill? Well it started off in Europe and I ended up going Serving in Angola and Morocco and I went down to Southwest Africa. I actually got on a boat with my van from Portugal to Angola and then I drove down and I ended up going to South Africa, Mozambique and I actually ended up immigrating to Zimbabwe. So what exactly happens when you go as an ambassador of Serving? What is the specialness of Serving to people across the world? Here's my opinion, I think that Serving is the greatest sport in the history of mankind and with that comes responsibility for the surfer to give back. What makes it so great? It's just amazing. I wrote down every single sport in the world and when I put it on my scale Serving turned out to be the best one. There's a natural response of people, even those who don't serve Serving as a culture. What have you seen across the world? Well everywhere because there's 185 nations that have coasts and so when you go to those nations and you bring a surfboard to a kid who's lived on the beach his whole life and you show him what it is and you see him stand up, he'll lift his hands up and so much excitement and then the rest is history. So what exactly do you try to communicate through this process of Serving? What is your message that you take to the world? Well the message is a message of hope it gives value it gives them a purpose, a destiny it's jobs. Like an example, like in Bangladesh I just got on a plane, I looked at a world map and said there's surf there, got on a plane didn't know anybody and just showed up and now there's a whole big surf club and movies being made and the young kids now are becoming adults they all speak English so some of the doctors that had PhDs would come down from Dhaka down to Cox Bazar in Bangladesh and they would be so surprised that these street kids would speak English. They couldn't even believe it was possible because they wanted to communicate with us it changed their mindset and they learned English. Now you regularly take teams of volunteers across the world as surfers and carry this good will message of character, hope and bring it to people who otherwise may not have such hope. Tell me a little bit about one of these trips. Well like Bangladesh when we went there you figured we just went out on the water and there was this guy who had purchased a surfboard didn't speak any English and when he saw us he came running out on the water and he became one of our best friends and now after all these years like 15 years they call me the architect of surfing in Bangladesh and even the government and the tourist association has thanked us for bringing something to Bangladesh because Bangladesh is not kind of a tourist destination but now surfing is on the map and it's making an impact in the communities in Bangladesh. How big was the group you took over? There must have been maybe 8 of us 8 of you went and what did you do when you were there? Well we just loved on the people and we just went out surfing and just started getting kids and pushing them on the surfboards and before you know it and we left some surfboards there and we went back and brought surfboards and boogie boards and introduced them into the sport and now it's a thriving thing to get on to. Well right now the team is in Egypt if you can believe that a lot of people say like they're surfing in Egypt and yeah they surf all along the Mediterranean in fact there's like I think there's 20,000 surfers in Israel alone so we were able to help introduce surfing into the culture we had the first surf contest years ago in Egypt and now we're doing a surf camp for the local Bedouin kids and the local kids there in Agamia so it's exciting just to see how it goes into an individual. What happens at a surf camp? How many kids are involved? It depends it could be like probably right now it's maybe 30 we just did one here on Oahu I think they had like 50 some kids so we're always using surfing as a vehicle to teach character and to teach you know environmental issues because we believe that we as surfers are responsible for the environment and the ocean so we teach all that earlier you said in your Bangladesh where you've taught business entrepreneurship so this last time we had actually he was a coach from Colorado that we did like a three part thing on business and how to start a business and it was really effective and even right now they're mentoring and tutoring this young boy to actually start a surf business in Bangladesh. So what's he going to do? What kind of business will he do? He'll go into the whole surf industry just make surfboards shape them bring surfing surfboards into Bangladesh because we have to bring in all the surfboards there's no surfboards for say for sale in Bangladesh you got to bring them all in. You have any follow through or continued relationship with people like this? Yeah we go every year and we keep in contact with them they keep in contact with us so it's really it's not about just blessing it's about building so our organization that's our long term goal is to actually is to build something in every nation that we go to. Incredible now where have you had some measure of success? Right now we were able to purchase some property in Sri Lanka and so right now we have full-time staff down there that are working in the community there it's actually it's a Muslim community a fishing village they have you know Hindus they have some Christians in that village and they're every week they're doing they have family night they have women's tea they're teaching the girls how to surf so they've actually started the first girls surf club in Sri Lanka. So you're working with both Muslims and Christians in a nation that has been torn by religious strife. Yeah and that's one of the things that's so exciting you know one of my Muslim friends he came up to me says Tom like why are why aren't we doing something like what you're doing and so I tried to encourage him you know and it's just fun because we work together and we you know obviously we our goal is to help teach morals and character and so it's really a fun to exchange even if some there's maybe some opposing opinions on some things but we still get along and I have a lot of good Muslim friends everywhere in the world and it's exciting. It sounds like you received very well with welcome almost wherever you go is that the case? Yeah well I'll tell you a story I was surfing in Oman I was on a boat with a Muslim guy a turbine along beard at the end of the conversation when we were getting off the boat he said I hate you but I like you and I believe that that's our whole goal is to not just you know is to really love the people right where they are and be their friend and even as we you know go into North Korea a lot of people say like I mean you're going to South Korea go no we go to North Korea and then that opens up a whole other story. Well that's what I wanted to ask you about before we end the program today North Korea that's incredible how in the world did that open up to you in the first place and you've gone first of all how many times have you gone? I've gone there four times. Four times? How did that get started? Well a friend was actually there he was digging wells he's an American and he was driving and all of a sudden he said that he heard this voice say he had a hold of surfing the nations and see if they would consider coming to North Korea and he contacted you know all the officials and stuff like that and before you know we all got visas and we were asked by the government to help introduce surfing into the culture of North Korea we were the first official delegation to bring surfing into the nation. That's incredible and when you went what kind of things did you do? How have you done since then? Well we teach we do a surf camp there and they actually you wouldn't believe this but in Pyongyang they have this huge water park with a wave pool it's a small wave we took in soft tops the Costco soft tops and we would teach maybe over the years hundreds of kids how to surf and you can't even imagine to see a young you know North Korean kid stand up on a surfboard in a wave pool and see the stoke and the excitement that he gets and from there you know we just had open doors all over the place. How does your presence there impact the perception of America? Oh all the time they would ask us like are you an American and they just couldn't believe that you're an American actually being there because they just have such a negative thing and there's so many anti-American propaganda but when we just were one on one with them and you can imagine I'm in the water with a North Korean in their bathing suit having a one on one conversation with them and in the end they go we love America, we love you we love surfing and we want to say thank you for coming and being our friend. What a transformation of attitude. Yeah oh it's amazing but you can see the mindset changing right before your eyes and as we've gone back and met the same people that we've met every year it's unbelievable and what we do is we bring the silk flower lays and we get them all together and we bring trophies so we really make a big deal about investing and encouraging them. You definitely go as Americans but not just Americans, you go as Hawaiians. Yeah we represent the sport because we believe that Hawai'i's it's music and surfing so we believe that we can go anywhere in the world and take the surfing. We take guitar so it was funny we were out on the moonlight on this hotel and my friend had his guitar and one of the girls from Hawaii was actually teaching the North Korean girls hula right there on the platform right at the hotel on a moonlit and day doing the hula it was just like you got chicken skin. So this soft of all softest diplomacy is accomplishing up there in North Korea. I think it's just one changing people one by one and I think that that's the whole key of really about life is it's believing in people and I believe that all the work that we've done there we're still trying to get back because there's a travel ban right now so we're hoping that that will change so we can get back and continue the work that we started. Well you've come a long way from Wahiawa town making the message of aloha really. Really it's aloha it's the love that they all want. They all want to know that they're loved unconditional. That's wonderful. Tom I want to thank you for being on our program today and I want to wish you the very best in your work in Wahiawa and across the world where are you off to next with the next destination? I'm going to Bangladesh I should be in April so you're invited to come along with me Let me check my calendar that'll be good for your resume. Sounds good. Tom thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you. My guest today Tom Bauer president of Surfing the Nations. What a wonderful organization bringing transformation to little towns like Wahiawa and also crossing boundaries across the world representing the United States and Hawaii with the aloha spirit. I'm Kili Akinah with Think Tech Hawaii we'll be right back next week don't go away aloha.