A local scholarship, a financial-aid student, and a first-year trip leader.
Local scholarship · Bahamas
Junior's first bonefish
When Junior was 16, he joined his first Fish for Change week in the Bahamas as a local scholarship student. He had never fly fished, and had never heard of a bonefish. He came from a place where opportunities like this were limited, and fly fishing was a world he might never have found on his own.
At the end of the week he wrote a letter to the owner of the lodge: "I hope you hire me one day. This feels as though it's my calling and my future."
A few years later he earned an apprenticeship at that same lodge. He learned the water, the fish, the boats, the flies, and what it means to be a guide. Today Junior guides full time, building a career around a sport he'd never have met without that first week.
Then the Texas students who had shared that first week with him flew back to the Bahamas for spring break, stayed with Junior, and spent the whole week fishing with him as their guide. That is the full circle: a scholarship that became a career, a community and lifelong friendships that brought those same kids back to his home years later.
Will joined Fish for Change from Northern Idaho on a full scholarship. He had never been on a plane, never seen the ocean, and never met someone from outside his hometown. On the first day, wearing his big belt buckle and taking everything in, he tapped me on the arm and asked, "Hey Heather, is that a gecko?" When I said yes, he looked at me and said, "I've just never seen a lizard before."
In that moment I realized how small the world he came from had been, and how big the one he'd just walked into was.
Watching Will experience the week was like getting to live it all again for the first time. Everything was new, everything was foreign, and every experience challenged the way he understood the world. By the end of the week I watched him become a confident traveler with a deeper empathy for people and experiences different from his own.
Will is exactly why we create these opportunities: to give young people the chance to step outside the world they know and discover just how big it can be.
When I arrived in Mangrove Bight my first year with Fish for Change I was in a pure, vulnerable form. I was recovering from a tough battle with my mental health, unknowingly dealing with a hormonal disorder. I was lost, only holding glimmers of who I knew I could be and who I knew I was somewhere deep beneath my river.
I was met where I was at.
Fish for Change might be presented to you as a week-long international summer camp, but in reality, time does not exist in Mangrove Bight. You are taken through your existence and purpose and self over and over again. You are met with new experiences that force you to choose who you want to show up as. You encounter people with harrowing stories that say “God blessed us with another day”.
When you arrive in an environment where vulnerability is ever present, where health and happiness is not taken for granted, where you are family, where you are wrapped into the arms of the island and held, you do not walk out unchanged.
Life has proved to me time after time that everything is a circle. Cycles of unknowing and confusion on your identity and confidence end every time, they are a beginning to a new kind of being, where you are more connected with your power and ability than ever before. I believe it is a bit of a tradition for me at this point. Before going to Mangrove, I reach into my mind and pull out my struggles, I put them on my sleeve and offer them up. Every single time, they are taken from me and transformed into a powerful lesson and new wealth of knowledge.
In those five weeks this summer, I crossed over. From student to leader. It was so natural and tranquil, a new circle.
On my 21st birthday, I took a boat ride to the Key to pick up a new group of kids. It was just me on the bow, with Jose driving. I stared into the huge, blossoming trees on the banks of the island, up into the mountains, down into the clear blue water. I took huge breaths of that beautiful, humid air. I made it. 17 year old me, looking at these same trees and water, would never believe it. It was this moment of immense gratitude and grounding in the place and person I was in that exact time and place. It was peace.
"My favorite memory was playing Survivor on the island. We were all up super late running around, watching the stars, and playing hide and seek. Then the rain hit. Everything was soaked and we all couldn’t fit in the tent. It was so much fun. We all woke up the next morning, put our wet clothes back on, and waded the flats for hours."
Photos from the dock, most days during programs.
During the summer, the day's photos go up on Instagram so parents can follow along. The rest of the year it's where the alumni hang out.
