WHAT IS THE FLORIDA FISHING ACADEMY?

The Florida Fishing Academy (FFA) is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization formed in 2006 for the purpose of empowering at-risk youth with positive life skills, alternatives to destructive or antisocial behavior and a sense of responsibility for shaping the world around them. FFA uses fishing as a vehicle for delivering these lessons, weaving effective life, environmental and social skills into a youth-oriented, hands-on sports angling curriculum.  Through our organically designed Angling for a Healthy Future course — an updated, more interactive version of the nationally acclaimed Hooked On Fishing-Not on Drugs®[1] curriculum — FFA has, to date, helped to change the lives of thousands of deserving children in Palm Beach County. We are constantly testing and improving our course and have recently adopted a proven, evidence-based life skills curriculum at the high school level, under the widely touted LifeSkills Training Program model, which has been shown to dramatically reduce drug use, risky sexual behavior and unsafe driving habits.

FFA’s curriculum targets third- through eleventh-graders and is customized to appeal to the different age groups. In the 20-session elementary school program, taught in the public school aftercare system, Angling for a Healthy Future students learn not just the basics of fishing — tying a hook, casting, boating safety, the environmental benefits of catch-and-release, fish identification, marine biology — but also how to repair their rods, how to clean and cook their catches, and with the help of a Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission biologist, how to dissect a fish. Each class also has a strong dose of character-building, family-bonding, leadership opportunities and other life lessons. The program includes regular fishing trips, and as part of the buy-in requirement, each child must be accompanied on the trips by a parent or adult relative. Parents are also engaged to participate and help out throughout the year and are encouraged to practice the skills and lessons at home with their children. Each student who misses no more than two classes gets a free rod and reel, and as we expand the program, we plan to offer a rod loaner program, making fishing ventures even more accessible and affordable. The program also emphasizes an anti-drug and anti-violence message — through the curriculum and also by offering healthy, positive role models — and requires students to sign a drug-free pledge to participate. At the middle and high school level, taught largely in city-run Youth Violence Prevention Programs, FFA offers a two-year curriculum that uses ethical angling to offer at-risk youth an alternative to gangs and drugs and to prepare them for life after high school. In the first year, students take a more advanced version of the 20-session Angling for a Healthy Future (Units 1 and 2), with basic fishing lessons supplemented by more sophisticated, age-appropriate life skills taught under the national, evidence-based LifeSkills Training Program model.  The second-year, advanced program, Charting a Course in the Marine Industries, is an in-depth curriculum broken up into two parts, Units 3 and 4. Throughout 20 sessions, Unit 3 takes budding anglers a step further, building on their basic skills and growing passion for fishing with an intensive career-development curriculum specially designed by FFA. These advanced students learn the mechanics of building and painting custom rods, boat maintenance, commercial chartering, commercial fishing (including applying for federal and state permits and establishing relationships with seafood wholesalers), and fishing in junior angler tournaments. After completing Unit 3, these advanced second-year students graduate to Unit 4, getting a heavier dose of life skills training with the national, evidence-based Lifeskills Training Transitions Program. This 11-session course helps adolescents navigate the transition from high school into the workforce, armed with strategies for decision-making and managing stress and anger. To hone these new skills, and in learning to give back to the community, our Unit 4 students return to our elementary schools as mentors and teach our Angling for a Healthy Future students, aiding the continuing fidelity of our program.  To date, a lack of funding has prevented us from offering this new advanced program extensively to our students, since it essentially requires a permanent facility to house the classes. But a limited version has been taught since 2008 at the Boynton Beach Youth Empowerment Center, where our rod-painting machines and other equipment are currently housed, and plans are underway to implement the program at West Palm Beach’s YVPP center.

It is important to emphasize that in order to actively engage our students and reinforce classroom lessons at every stage of our program, it is not enough to sit in a chair inside. The outdoors is our second classroom, and fishing trips to the lake, pier, canal or, when funding permits, to the ocean by boat are essential for students to practice their lessons, challenge their skills and see for themselves how fishing can change their lives. With these courses in our toolkit, FFA has set a lofty challenge for itself — to create a new generation of ethical anglers who enjoy a healthy, constructive hobby, take seriously their role in environmental conservation and boast new tools to pursue a potential career in the marine industries. And we’re already off to a strong start. Since its inception in 2006, FFA has had 1,095 at-risk youth complete the Angling For A Healthy Future curriculum. Another 763 elementary students — accompanied by their teachers, parents, grandparents or other adult relatives — have participated in one of a dozen half-day or full-day fishing fairs or camps over the years. Along the way, FFA has awarded fishing rods and reels to well over 2,000 participants in its various programs, and has taken hundreds of students on fishing trips to South Florida waterways. And in keeping with our environmental message, FFA anglers have released alive approximately 95% of all fish caught.  By all accounts, the program works. Past studies show that 60 percent of youth report a stronger interest in fishing after participating in the program, and 80 percent of those are more environmentally conscious. In follow-up surveys and in anecdotal feedback, teachers and parents have said FFA classes give them a powerful incentive to get their kids to stay in school and behave while they’re there. A number of students have also reported a new interest in pursuing a college education to better equip themselves for a career in the marine industries. Extensive research has also shown that the LifeSkills Training and Transitions courses we offer have been proven to reduce the use of tobacco by 87%, alcohol by 60%, marijuana by 75%, polydrug by 66% and methamphetamines by 68%, and are highly effective in curbing and preventing violence and delinquency, HIV risk behavior and risky driving. These effects have been proven to last up to six years and have been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

In our four years of existence, we’ve shown how a small, under-funded group of volunteers can have a significant impact on the neediest in our community, delivering life-changing programs with the power to transform at-risk youth into tomorrow’s leaders. Using its four-year history as a solid, proven foundation, FFA is now ready to take a larger role in the community — formalizing our program into the development of a regional initiative that strives to reach every Title I school[2] in South Florida, and eventually, every school in the Sunshine State.  Ultimately, we envision the FFA as an expansive, multi-faceted and self-sustaining organization that engages Florida’s children in the joys, responsibilities and opportunities of ethical angling. In Florida, fishermen outnumber golfers 2-to-1, and 85 percent of freshwater anglers start fishing at age 12 or younger. And yet, in South Florida — the fishing capital of the world — a local landscape filled with gymnastics camps, Little League programs, chess teams, golf classes and adult fishing clubs has no expansive, school-based, ongoing fishing curriculum for kids. There is little if anything out there that engages children — tomorrow’s anglers, boaters, marine biologists and environmental stewards — in fishing as a sport and livelihood taught in a comprehensive, organized fashion or that involves them in the effort to preserve our fragile marine environment. That’s the void we want to fill. How? First, we’d like to see Angling for a Healthy Future, FFA’s first-year program, expanded to all Title I elementary and middle school aftercare programs throughout the Broward and Palm Beach County school districts. To become more financially viable and sustain these programs in the long-term, we envision a broad-based series of revenue-generating initiatives that would also broaden our young anglers’ experience and skill set. This two-county initiative will allow FFA to further refine course offerings and delivery, preparing the way ahead as we grow toward our next goal: providing our unique curriculum and support to every Title I school in Florida.  Why such wide-reaching ambitions? Because research shows that at-risk children benefit from prevention programs that provide healthy social and emotional development, parental and community engagement and positive adult role models. This is especially imperative today, with the erosion of the social safety nets that once supported families raising children, making it ever more essential to offer programs that nurture in children positive self-concepts, awareness of their role as responsible citizens and socialization skills like problem-solving, self-confidence, decision-making, negotiation tactics, team-building, anti-bullying mindsets and drug, alcohol and tobacco prevention. It is a need that is not unique to Florida. That’s why, once we have fully saturated Florida’s schools, FFA has a most ambitious hope and intention in the long-term: to expand its outreach to every Title I school in the entire USA.

HOW DO WE GET THERE?

During the past four years, FFA has worked hard to hone its message and the delivery of that message. FFA has demonstrated its positive impact on program participants and laid a solid foundation for both corporate and private donor recognition. FFA, its programs and its personnel have appeared or been the subjects of various pieces in both print and on television. It’s time now — time to stop operating out of a garage on boot-strap financing and in-kind donations that allow us to achieve only a fraction of what must be done. In order to undertake the South Florida program, FFA must: 

Develop long-term sustainable corporate financial donors that allow us to project and manage long-term budgets
Develop long-term, sustainable corporate and private in-kind donors who provide goods and services that allow FFA to steward donations in a responsible manner
Develop long-term relationships with Broward, Martin and Palm Beach County’s numerous governmental organizations
Procure a favorable lease on a property to permanently house FFA
Hire core permanent staff
Further develop a graduated curriculum that allows participants to progress to greater positions of responsibility within FFA
Develop multi-media program modules that allow the fidelity delivery of program content through the exploitation of technology

WHO IS ALREADY STANDING BY OUR SIDE?

The credibility and sustainability of every nonprofit lies in the quality of the partners and sponsors it is capable of attracting. To show how far we have come in a short time, below is a list of the organizations and agencies with which we have established financial and in-kind partnerships to date: 

• Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation
  Sun-Sentinel Children’s Fund, a part of the McCormick Foundation
  City Fish Market Restaurant
  Chops Lobster Bar
  Sam W. Klein Charitable Foundation
  DeVos Blum YMCA of South Palm Beach County
  Community Redevelopment Agency of Boynton Beach
  Boynton Beach Parks and Recreation Department
  Boynton Beach Police Department
  West Palm Beach Parks and Recreation Department
  City of Boynton Beach Youth Violence Prevention Project 
  City of West Palm Beach Youth Violence Prevention Project
  City of Riviera Youth Violence Prevention Project
  Fish Florida Tag
  Florida Marlins
  Future Fisherman Foundation
  Poinciana Elementary Math, Science & Technology Magnet School
  South Florida Water Management District
  Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission
  Publix
  Bass Pro Shops
  Tuppen’s Marine
  Florida Panthers 
  Miami Dolphins 
  Tarpon Bend Food & Tackle
  Paskoski Construction

HOW CAN YOU HELP?

Each of us understands that the social safety nets and educational programs that target the typical FFA participant have been stretched beyond the breaking point. Our schools are being asked to do more and more with less and less. As a result, anything beyond the most basic and rudimentary educational programs are being cut. There is now an entire generation of children at risk of missing out on any opportunity to develop social, environmental and team-building skills. And any assistance local governments were once able to provide in the form of supplementary funding is harder and harder to come by, as the deep recession forces cities and counties to cut their budgets, too.

At the same time our government is struggling, for-profit corporations have taken a pummeling in the media. It seems as if every corporation has been painted with the same brush. Profits are evil. Making money is wrong. The truth, however, is that but for these corporations and the good they do in our communities every day, our lives would be less satisfying. Unfortunately, a significant amount of corporate largess flows towards hugely bureaucratic nonprofits with multimillion-dollar fundraising budgets. FFA simply cannot compete with these fundraising machines. As a result, many of our area’s kids are left underserved. You can help. You must help. It remains for us, private and corporate citizens of Palm Beach, Martin and Broward counties, to take care of our own.

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[1] The flagship, mentor-based educational program of the Future Fisherman Foundation, Hooked on Fishing-Not on Drugs® was created in 1980 to motivate young anglers to practice ethical fishing techniques and help to preserve the environment, while also developing positive life skills, such as decision-making, goal-setting, communicating meaningfully with others, and choosing to remain drug-free.
[2] Schools are referred to as Title I schools, and receive federal Title I funding, when at least 40% of their students participate in the free- and reduced-lunch program.