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Ocean Women

Established in April 2022

We protect what we love, and we love what we know. In many places, women and girls don’t get equal opportunities to access ocean recreation - swimming, snorkelling, diving, surfing - and get to know and love the ocean. In 2022, we launched a multi-year, action-focused research project: Ocean Women. Ocean Women's purpose is to make the transformational benefits of the ocean available to all women and girls, all over the world, for years to come.

Watch the video below to learn about our first pilot programme, run in collaboration with Salted Ventures Swimmers in the Maldives.

 
 
 
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PROJECT OVERVIEW

Photo © Yaniu Mohamed

In many tropical coastal communities with large ocean areas women and girls do not swim, snorkel or engage with the ocean as much as men and boys do – two-thirds of women worldwide cannot swim. Reported reasons include fear, societal stigmas, aesthetic ideals, lack of role models, equipment, or access to safe spaces, and gender norms. 

Through our collaborative experiences, working with Affiliate Projects in over 20 countries, we have learnt that to sustainably protect the biodiversity that mobulid rays depend upon, coastal communities must develop and lead conservation initiatives that work for them. Tropical coastal countries have large ocean areas and are often heavily reliant on the ocean for food, livelihoods, and coastal protection. They are often biodiversity hotspots, and therefore their populations play a disproportionately large role in ocean conservation on a global scale. All over the world, indigenous knowledge prioritises nature protection. But in some communities, certain groups of people, including women and girls, do not access the ocean recreationally as much as others.  We think this could negatively impact whole communities, as women are shown to be effective conservation leaders but do not always get a seat at the table, or a ‘swim in the sea.’

Research with Maldivian school students we work with reveals that girls are 50% more likely than boys to have never snorkelled, and four times more likely to feel unconfident swimming in the sea. The Maldives is 99% ocean; most people live metres from the sea. Learning to swim is imperative not only for safety but for enabling access to the dominant environment and core recreation and economic space (50% of working Maldivians are employed in fisheries and tourism sectors). 

“As Maldivians, we all should know how to swim, but that is not the reality. Most of us are scared to go to the sea and do not possess the basic skills of swimming… As a teacher, I would say that my student’s learning is very much limited because they don’t know how to swim.” - Hamda Ibrahim, Maldives’ secondary school marine science teacher.

Additionally, young people in the Maldives are often unaware that environmental careers exist or that they could pursue them.

“We are coastal people living in a large ocean state, and our very survival is dependent on a healthy marine ecosystem. I believe that actually showing people what they have in their backyard is key to a future with environmentally conscious individuals who are passionate about protecting the ocean.”-  Maeesha Mohamed, MMCP Board Director.

Photo © Flossy Barraud

Since 2015, our team of educators have taught hundreds of children and women to swim and snorkel and witness the reefs or megafauna the Maldives is famous for. We have seen many of these people become passionate conservation advocates that strive to make positive changes in their communities.

This disparity exists in many tropical coastal communities, where we’ve learnt from local organisations that positive impacts of women accessing the ocean recreationally include:

  • Improved inclusion of women in conservation.

  • Growth of bottom-up conservation initiatives.

  • Improving gender equality in regions where this is critical.

  • Improving livelihood opportunities in eco-tourism and small-scale fisheries sectors. 

  • Mitigating poverty in some of the lowest-income regions in the world.

Through this project, we will expand our educational endeavours to move towards achieving equality in ocean exploration for women and girls, especially in tropical coastal communities. Over time, this will come full circle, as ocean-connected women could better protect the valuable ecosystems that both they and species like manta rays depend upon. During this project, we’ll learn from our international network, and pilot a swim instructor training programme in the Maldives.

By 2026, we aim to have written and widely shared an Ocean Access Strategy, which outlines tried and tested ways that communities and organisations all over the world are and can improve recreational ocean access for women and girls.

 

PROJECT GOAL

Improve recreational access and connection to the ocean for women and girls worldwide.

 

Main Objectives

We’ll collaborate with a diverse range of local community groups, organisations, universities, and university students in every location. Our key aims are to:

  • Gain an in-depth understanding of gender inequality in recreational ocean access. By learning from women in tropical coastal communities and from initiatives already underway that improve women and girls’ access to ocean recreation.

  • Collaboratively develop programmes to improve ocean access. Starting with a swim instructor training programme in the Maldives.

  • Create and widely share an ‘Ocean Access Strategy’. That outlines common barriers, mediators, impacts and learnings and ultimately helps communities and organisations working worldwide to identify, trial and implement solutions that could work for their localities, upscaling ocean access initiatives worldwide.

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Project Leader - Flossy Barraud

Flossy is a marine conservationist and educator who led the Manta Trust’s education programmes for over four years, firstly in the Maldives, and then for the core team based in the UK and working with our global network of Affiliate Projects.

Flossy completed her undergraduate in Childhood and Disability Studies, and her master’s degree in Marine Environmental Management. During her masters, she co-designed the Maldives Manta Conservation Programme’s experiential marine education programme and conducted research to analyse the effectiveness of the programme, which identified a significant gender disparity between how much time males and females spent in the sea. This, and subsequent observations and discussions whilst working closely with Maldivian communities, sparked her passion for evidencing this gender disparity and findings ways to overcome it. Flossy is doing a PhD with the University of Plymouth to drive this action-based research forward.

 
 
 

Photo: Anne Pinto-Rodrigues

Maldives project co-leader – Aminath Zoona (Zuna)

Aminath Zoona (Zuna) is the founder of Salted Ventures Swimmers, established in 2019. The swim school caters to students starting from 2 months of age. SVS offers a variety of classes from novice to advanced swim lessons as well as SSI-certified swim instructor courses. A competitive swimmer before embracing motherhood, Zuna’s passion for the ocean was sparked at a young age when her father taught her to swim. In introducing her younger cousins and later her children to swim and snorkel, she found that she had a natural instinct for helping others to stay calm and overcome their fear; this led to her leaving a career in Aviation to pursue her passion. She completed her SSI Swim Instructor Trainer program in 2016 and decided to establish a swimming school combining her passion for the ocean and teaching.

Co-leading this program is a dream come true for Zuna. In educating ocean-minded individuals, she hopes to create a domino effect which will allow equal opportunities to the efforts in protecting the ocean that we love for future generations.

 
 
 
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Key Achievements

 

Trained six Maldivian SSI Swimming and Snorkelling Instructors.

 

Learnt from 204 Maldivian and Indonesian experts and community members through interviews and consultations.

 

Built collaborations with the Maldives Ministry of Education and the University of Papua, Indonesia.

 
 
 

Learnt about recreational ocean access from 64 people working across 19 countries.

 

Won the 'Future of Conservation NGOs' Innovation Challenge Prize.

 
 

Project Updates:

December 2023

Following our extensive consultations and interviews in 2022, we put our learnings into practice and worked with two islands – Rasdhoo and Ukulhas in Alif Alif Atoll – to co-design a female-focused SSI Swimming and Snorkelling Instructor Training Programme.

In November we ran the programme with five women and one man from these islands, and an additional man from Fuvahmulah island, who was supported by the Fuvahmulah Surfing Association. Over 10-days, the trainees participated in intensive classroom and theory sessions and in-water training and skills development. They also participated in apprenticeships and had the opportunity to introduce over 60 children from Rasdhoo island to swimming. Key to the programme was having mentor and knowledge sharing workshops:

  • Nasheeth Thoha: Running effective and sustainable community programmes

  • Ifasha Abdul Raheem: Learnings from a female swimming instructor in another atoll

  • Sham’aa Abdullah Hameed: SSI programmes and technical support

  • Flossy Barraud: Environmental responsibility and encouraging nature connection

We wrapped up with a closing ceremony to celebrate the newly-qualified instructors, including speeches, certificates and live music.

The instructor trainees and the project leaders* (from top left to right): Sameeu, Aduham, Flossy*, Zuna*, Shifza, Hudha, Shifaza, Naaz and Azmeena

The trainees blew us away with their passion and engagement. They have now all been certified and started to plan programmes for their communities, including:

  • Rasdhoo island: the instructors have scheduled their first Learn-to-Swim programme for adults and children. They are charging a small fee, opening-up income-opportunities.

  • Ukulhas island: The instructor assisted UNICEF and Moodhu Bulhaa dive centre to lead a snorkel experience for all grades of the school. Following this, they will begin their first adult swimming programme.

  • Fuvahmulah island: The instructor is planning their first Learn-to-Swim programme for students in January. Following this, they will teach the interested students to surf, a popular island activity that is under-accessed by local people compared to tourists visiting Fuvahmulah.

Throughout the programme we have been conducting interviews with the trainees and surveys with their communities, learning about how participating in the training has bought the trainees together, made them feel empowered to access new spaces and teach their children to do the same, and increased women’s confidence and wellbeing. We will continue mentoring the new instructors and monitoring impacts over the next year. We are excited to follow their achievements!

World Conference on Drowning Prevention 2023

Following the programme’s success, Zuna and Flossy attended the World Conference on Drowning Prevention 2023 in Perth, Australia. They presented a poster and oral presentation on the programme and on Flossy’s PhD research. They learnt a lot from many of inspiring attendees and developed relationships which could help the project evolve and expand.


August 2023

We launched the Maldives Ocean Women project with our first two islands - AA. Rasdhoo and Ukulhas. Co-leader and swim instructor trainer, Zuna, will be conducting swimming lessons with women on Rasdhoo island for the next 3 months, culminating in six participants being trained as SSI Swimming & Snorkelling Instructors and supported to conduct learn-to-swim and snorkel lessons and clubs within their schools and communities for years to come. 

We kicked off with a few amazing lessons with 22 women in Rasdhoo and were overjoyed to see their dedication and how much they improved, going from floating to kicking, learning front crawl and regulating their breathing.


December 2022

From October – December 2022, Flossy visited the Maldives and Indonesia to learn from communities, co-develop ocean access programmes, and build meaningful collaborations.

Maldives:

In the Maldives, we focused on conducting in-depth interviews to gain a rich understanding of local perspectives and needs. In 5-weeks, we conducted 36 ~1-hour interviews with government minister’s, NGO leaders, female diving pioneers, swimming instructors, and community members. Alongside our partner, Zuna of Salted Ventures Swimmers, we consulted with 160 people from 43 groups across 13 islands, including Island Councils, Women’s Development Committees, NGO’s, schools, and Parent Teacher Associations. We built key collaborations with the Ministry of Youth, Sports & Community Empowerment, Ministry of Education and Swimming Association of Maldives. We used our collaborative learnings to inform the design of the pilot phase of the swimming instructor training programme: training 10 instructors from five islands in mid-late 2023.  We’ll train two local people, at least one female, from each island as SSI Swimming Instructors and support them to develop programmes to teach others in their communities to swim and snorkel for years to come. Collectively, these programmes could improve opportunities to connect to the sea for 5,800+ people. If successful, we aim expand to more islands in the future. Thank you to everyone who shared their knowledge with us.

Indonesia:

Flossy was invited to Arborek, Raja Ampat, Indonesia by Githa Anathasia of the local Mora women’s group, to advise on a Female Diver and Conservationist Training Programme led by Githa, and Mads of Women in Ocean Science, as a new initiative: Empower Ocean. As part of a collaboration with the University of Papua (UNIPA), Flossy gave a talk to students and lecturers followed by a feedback session to share knowledge and advice. Following this, two UNIPA Ecotourism undergraduates accompanied us to Arborek for five days, where we worked together to learn from the community. We would like to thank the amazing Arborek community and UNIPA staff and students – especially Dr Selvi Tebay and Jemmy Manan. We look forward to collaborating on future projects.

Our learnings will be incorporated into the Ocean Women project’s final outcome – a widely shared ‘Ocean Access Strategy’ outlining models to encourage more people to use the sea for recreation in different contexts and cultures.

 
 
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Photos from the field

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Sponsors & Partners

 

Principal Supporters

 
 

Supporters

 
 
 

In-Kind Support

 
 
 
 

Research Partners

 
 
 

Project Partners

 
 

Thank you to everybody who has donated to this project and to related crowdfunding campaigns.

This project is all about collaboration and co-learning. We are always on the lookout for new partners and collaborators - financial and otherwise. If you want to know more or would like to chat about the project for any reason, please get in touch with Flossy: flossy.barraud@mantatrust.org.

 
 
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