My name is Thomas Vesper, and this is where it started for me.

I caught my first wave at 13 in the French Landes. What was a vacation activity quickly became an obsession, and that obsession opened a door I never expected: the world. At 14, I was already heading to Morocco alone for my first surf trip. At 16, Indonesia. At 18, I made the decision that would shape everything: trading the freezing 35cm waves of Palavas-les-Flots for a Bachelor's degree in International Relations at the University of Wollongong, Australia.

Then COVID hit. Back to France. But standing still was never really an option. I enrolled in a Master's in International Development at the University of Birmingham, but the classroom couldn't hold the answer I was looking for. I needed the ground. So I decided to keep studying but part-time and distance based. This allowed me to stay in a small fishing village in northern Peru called Lobitos, where I spent two years volunteering with a local NGO, teaching English and surfing to local kids growing up between the ocean and the desert. That's where I learned that development isn't something you import. It's something you support. It's built around the people who were already doing the work before we arrived.

It was also where a question started taking shape that I could not shake:

Every place I visited after that, every wave I rode, every person I met slowly built the answer. But the answer was never mine alone. Waves & Love is not a one-man show. It's a team of committed people scattered across the globe: close friends driving our communication from Ericeira and beyond, local ambassadors in Peru, Senegal, and the Philippines, and partner NGOs who open their doors to us.

Now I know. And this is what we are building together.