HKNC’s Summer Youth Vocational Program Featured on the Cover of the Long Beach Herald

The Summer Youth Vocational Program’s adaptive surfing week is the cover story of this week’s Long Beach Herald (July 30 issue). The article, by Chris Colucci, follows six program participants who spent a week surfing with Surf For All, Skudin Surf’s adaptive surfing initiative in Long Beach. It is reprinted below.

Replicated article:

Skudin Surf offers lessons to deaf-blind young adults
By Chris Colucci, Long Beach Herald, July 30, 2026

Helen Keller wrote, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” That may not have been a specific invitation to deaf-blind people to learn to surf, but it might as well have been.

Earlier this month, six participants in the Summer Youth Vocational Program at the Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths and Adults spent a week in Long Beach with adaptive surf instructors from Skudin Surf, getting comfortable with boards on land before venturing into the Atlantic for hands-on lessons each day.

The Helen Keller National Center, named for the late author and disability rights advocate who was both deaf and blind, is a division of Helen Keller Services, which was established in the 1890s to provide support and training for deaf-blind people. The center, based in Sands Point, is the only training, resource and rehabilitation facility of its kind in the country. The Summer Youth Vocational Program teaches people ages 16 to 24 career training and life skills. Each summer, attendees undertake a four-week curriculum including hiking adventures, STEAM education and this year’s inaugural surf lessons.

The Skudin Surf instructors used interpreters from the center to communicate with the participants. Erin Columbus, a Long Beach native and the center’s coordinator of vocational services, was on the beach and in the water throughout the week, watching as students and instructors learned to work together.

“Towards the end of the week, they didn’t even need the interpreter,” Columbus said. “They were just like, ‘We got this,’ and they figured it out.”

Skudin Surf has operated its Surf for All program since 2002, offering surfing lessons to children and teens with physical and intellectual disabilities. Its certified adaptive surf instructors use their expertise to help everyone enjoy the water, regardless of ability.

While a day spent surfing in Long Beach can be its own reward, the youth program was intended to send a deeper message to its participants. It had more to do with challenging preconceived notions, reminding them that they can be capable, and develop confidence by overcoming potentially intimidating scenarios. “I wanted to create an experience that empowers them, and give them an experience that others thought maybe wasn’t possible,” Columbus said. “So when they go to college one day, or when they’re meeting coworkers, they’ve got really cool stories to talk about.”

John Filek, executive director of the Helen Keller National Center, saw the same potential benefit and lessons when Columbus proposed the surf sessions. “I couldn’t think of a better opportunity to really figure out how to confront that fear and anxiety,” Filek said. “Especially when you consider riding a surfboard in the wide-open expanse of an ocean. That’s truly confronting those fears head on and realizing that you have that courage. More opportunities doing that builds confidence to help a person make their way in the world.”

Read the original article in the Long Beach Herald’s digital edition: https://www.liherald.com/