When an earthquake hits the Mentawai, or surrounding region, their world literally goes upside-down and we go into full-on emergency response mode.  For a couple of weeks, it’s a super hectic period as we try to reach the outlying villages with aid – food, shelter, building and hygiene kits - and raise funding at the same time.

After the October 2010 tsunami, we received an email from American photographer Michael Lawrence, who was in Bali at the time.  He wanted to help by documenting our work and the people of the Mentawai.  He didn’t want to be paid.

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Surfaid is resuming its landmark Malaria Free Mentawai (MFM) program on a major scale after the last widespread rollout in 2007-2008.

The insecticide-treated malaria nets have a lifespan of about five years before they need to be replaced.

Surfaid’s Country Director Anne Wuijts said malaria is a communicable disease which remains a community health problem around the world, including Indonesia.

“This disease has a high rate of morbidity and mortality in babies, children under five and pregnant mothers,” Wuijts said. “The incidence of malaria in Indonesia is still high, and efforts need to be made to decrease it.”

Wuijts said key steps that can help decrease the incidence of malaria are increasing the awareness and knowledge of the community about the disease, and promoting behaviour and practices that lead to malaria prevention.



“The Mentawai Islands are an area with difficult geographical factors which make it hard to access and this situation contributes to making malaria control and prevention efforts more difficult,” she said.

Since the inception of the Surfaid malaria program in 2000, Surfaid has delivered more than 60,000 nets and malaria education to over 300 villages in the Mentawai and Nias islands. This includes emergency relief work after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami and major earthquakes in the region, where people were displaced from their homes into temporary shelters.  ...read more

Are you on Tumblr? We have made a special Tumblr photo blog 'Catching Shadows' dedicated to the amazing photographers who donate shots to help promote our work. The first in an ongoing series is by Bob Barker. 

Check it out at surfaid.tumblr.com and follow away!

In a three-week journey, ranging from the Mentawai Islands to Nias and the Hinakos, Sydney-based photographer Bob Barker documented SurfAid’s work.

 “It was a fantastic opportunity to go beyond the surf breaks in the Mentawai and see how the people really lived,” Bob says.

“The people were really welcoming to these strangers in their village, and snaking down the rivers going to the remote villages was like something out of Heart of Darkness. ...read more

The past year has been a huge endeavour for our management and field teams as we rolled out our recovery program after the 2010 tsunami devastated many of the Mentawai villages.

We have now moved into long-term recovery for affected communities and we have a new program called SeSe, which means ‘appropriate’ in Mentawai language.

SeSe stands for Sejahtera Masyarakat, Sehat Ibu Anak (Prosperous Communities, Healthy Mothers and Children) and it will be implemented in the former internally displaced person (IDP) camps in South Pagai and one village in South Sipora.  These areas suffered the full force of the 3-4 metre tsunami in October 2010.



Ten community members lost their lives in Gobik, including seven children and infants.  Only three months before the tsunami struck, we had completed a gravity-fed water system in the village.  Somehow it managed to survive the onslaught of the ocean. ...read more

The winning fundraisers of our Get On Board campaign set off for an epic surf trip to the Mentawai islands in early March.  

Matt Belden and Will Hutchinson arrived in Padang to meet up with the SurfAid, Quiksilver and SDSU Center for Surf Research representatives and Quiksilver pros Balaram Stack and Ry Craike.  

The crew hopped aboard the Melaleuca charter boat, only to be met with a fierce storm that forced them to remain in Padang for the evening. The next morning the skies had cleared and they were ready to set sail for the Mentawai.

Matt, Will and the gang enjoyed some great surf days but all agreed that the highlight of their trip was time spent on the islands.  Will described it as “eye-opening”.  The aftermath of the 2010 tsunami was still very evident and Matt said it was “as if the jungle had been wiped out by a giant lawnmower”.



While on the islands, Matt and Will were able to witness SurfAid’s programs in action, and toured Quiksilver’s Katiet Center and radio tower projects.   ...read more

Thursday 12 April 2012

Two major earthquakes struck in the ocean off Sumatra yesterday setting off tsunami alerts and causing widespread panic.

The first quake, at 3.38pm, was of magnitude 8.6 in a depth of 23km, 434km south-west of Banda Aceh. It forced the evacuation of staff from SurfAid’s offices in Medan (North Sumatra), Padang (West Sumatra), Gunung Sitoli (Nias) and Tua Pejat (Mentawai Islands).

SurfAid’s Chief Financial Officer, Andrew Spagnardi, who is based in Medan, said the quake was very strong.  “It went on and on for more than four minutes.  We all ran outside and stood in the street with the rest of the local community away from anything that could fall on us,” he said.

Meanwhile residents of coastal cities and villages in the islands started fleeing towards higher ground in case of a tsunami.



Two hours later a strong aftershock of 8.2M hit, causing more panic.

“We had to evacuate our office again as we were concerned the building might collapse; it was a very eerie feeling,” Spagnardi said.

SurfAid staff rang all our offices to check that staff were OK and ascertain any injuries or damage in the villages.  Electricity was cut in many areas.

Three small tsunamis were recorded, the highest at 0.8m. The tsunami alert, which had been issued for the entire western coast of Sumatra by the Indonesian Meterology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), was lifted at 8pm.  Twenty-eight other countries had also issued alerts. ...read more

Indonesia is an archipelago consisting of more than 17,000 islands. The Indonesian population is the fourth largest in the world, with a total of 240 million inhabitants. About 19 million people try to survive on less than US$1 a day, while a staggering 120 million people live on less than US$2 a day.

The poorest areas of Indonesia are the remote islands where sometimes as many as 95 per cent of people in rural communities are poor. In isolated areas people can’t access the public basic services (education, health, work, etc.) that are usually concentrated in the bigger towns on the mainland. 

In the isolated Mentawai Islands this has resulted directly in unnecessary deaths, especially among pregnant women and children under five. It also contributes to the unacceptably high levels of malnutrition, diarrhoea and acute respiratory infections in children under five. The accessibility and quality of maternal health are still the major causes of high maternal deaths in Indonesia. Providing health care facilities for pregnant women and children under five in remote areas of Indonesia has been dauntingly challenging.

But SurfAid is up for that challenge!




Fighting poverty and improving living conditions is tougher than it seems. There are many different and interlinked factors that contribute to the situation. Any solution needs to take into account these different factors and find creative ways of tackling them.

So, SurfAid will provide very practical support such as materials to build water tanks, water taps and toilets for clean water and sanitation, mosquito nets to avoid malaria, and vegetable seeds to help establish nutrition gardens to eradicate malnutrition. ...read more

You can help support SurfAid by participating in Billabong’s Life’s Better in Boardshorts initiative that is designed to capture the moments that enrich our individual summer experiences.

The interactive project calls on people to use the Instagram app to take a photo of whatever it is that makes their life better and then upload the image to a communal gallery at billabong.com/lifesbetter

The payoff for sharing the photo is twofold. Each entry is eligible for prize packs that include everything from clothes to a surf trip but — more importantly — Billabong will make a $1 donation for each photo received to make life better for some less fortunate members of our global community. ...read more

On February 10, 2012 the top fundraiser of SurfAid’s first ever ‘Get On Board’ fundraising contest was announced.  Matt Belden of Surfbreak Rentals and a friend will be joining an all-star lineup for a once-in-a-lifetime Mentawai surf trip.

On March 7th, Matt and his friend will leave for the Mentawai Islands, alongside Quiksilver pros Balaram Stack and Ry Craike, and representatives of the Quiksilver Foundation, Quiksilver Travel, SDSU Center for Surf Research, and SurfAid.

Matt’s fundraising efforts not only won for him two spots on the Mentawai surf trip, but also raised an amazing $4,300 for SurfAid. ...read more

The Mentawai and Nias islands, off Indonesia’s Sumatran coast, are home to some of the most perfect surf breaks in the world. A dream destination for surfers. But look past the azure blue waters, and near perfect waves, and you’ll see a people challenged by regularly occurring natural disasters and disease.

Since 2000, SurfAid has been working to improve the health, wellbeing and self-reliance of the Mentawai and Nias people through education programs involving nutrition, hygiene and disease prevention. SurfAid has also taught Emergency Preparedness programs and provided disaster response to help prepare for and recover from devastating earthquakes and tsunamis.

These islands also represent a perfect case study to more deeply explore the challenges and opportunities related to broader issues of sustainability and the surfing industry’s connection to it … social, environmental, and economic.

All of this adds up to a driving need for more awareness within the surf industry in the United States … surfers, surf travelers, board shapers, glassers, apparel and accessories manufacturers … all of us.

So you’re probably thinking ... ...read more