If you were to see Lindsey Mercer on the beach, you might mistake her for a typical surfer girl. She’s got long, sun-bleached blonde waves, a warm smile, and a laid-back, athletic look customary of people who spend a lot of time at the local surf shop. Mercer may be a surfer, but there’s nothing about her that stops at “typical.”
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Why the founders of Surfing With Smiles believe that the ocean is for everyone
Three friends decided to make the ocean inclusive to all, by teaching kids with special needs how to surf.
When she isn’t surfing with her friends, snowboarding, or playing guitar, you might find Mercer running the nonprofit she started with her two friends, Taylor Thomas and Chelsea Stephens. Surfing with Smiles, run in partnership with Cinnamon Rainbows (a surf shop in Hampton, New Hampshire), offers surf lessons and surfing events throughout the summer to people with special needs.
Mercer sees the ocean as a freeing place for everyone. The unique sense of calm and equilibrium that can only be experienced on a surfboard is what keeps people coming back to the program from all over the coast. Thanks to enthusiastic participants like Dean Marion, awareness of the program is all through word of mouth and it’s spreading fast. This is Marion’s Surfing with Smiles story.