Fawas got his first surfboard at 12 years old — full of holes and barely rideable. He took it to his uncle, a local fisherman, who patched it up until it felt brand new. For the next six months Fawas took that board to the water every single day, teaching himself to stand and catch waves by watching the older kids surf. He was hooked.
As he grew older, surfing stopped being just something he did and became something he wanted to build. He co-founded the Arugam Bay Surf Club with a friend, partnered with Paddle for Relief to donate 50 boards across Sri Lanka’s surf community, and spent three years learning how to teach before earning his ISA certification. From a small board shop on Arugam Bay’s main road to running sessions at camps across the island, he was learning everything he could.
That experience became SAFA — Surfing Access For All. Now Secretary General of the Surfing Federation of Sri Lanka and a former WSL competitor, Fawas has trained the majority of instructors teaching across the bay today. But at its heart SAFA is still about the same thing it always was — sharing the feeling of being in the water with anyone willing to give it a go.
