Our Story

High Tides International (HTI) is about finding a place you love and contributing to it where ever your strengths intersect with existing needs. HTI was spearheaded by Leah Donatiello, who is currently our Executive Director. As a result of a volunteer trip and subsequent internships with another not-for-profit, she fell in love with a small town in Northern Peru called Lobitos. After completing her degree in Health Promotion and yoga teacher training, Leah returned to Lobitos and began offering programs to meet community needs. She started yoga classes for children and co-founded a “girls club” for young girls, as well as partnering with another community member to support the biblioteca (library). In the interest of sustainability and continued growth, Leah incorporated High Tides International as a Canadian not-for-profit in the summer of 2015. With the help of some dedicated board members, we have built a strong foundation for the organization over the last year, and are now beginning to look to the future as we begin our second year of operations.

Looking Ahead

In the future, we would like to expand our programs into a cohesive leadership development stream. This would include refurbishing a community pool and offering swimming lessons, building a leadership curriculum, creating volunteer and part time paid positions for our older participants to practice and be rewarded for their skills, and developing a scholarship fund to make post secondary education more feasible for our deserving participants. Over the next year, our focus is to develop the profile of our programs in the community, and explore opening new sustainable revenue streams that will enable us to make the long term financial plans necessary to meet the goals above.

What We Do

Each program run by HTI is rooted in the needs of the community and has been selected after years of experience working in Lobitos and piloting each program: Girls Club, the library, and yoga classes for kids. These programs are a collection of ideas and efforts from past and current community outreach workers that have been amalgamated to become the programs of the HTI Lobitos Community Centres.

Girls Club

Girls Club happens on a weekly basis and is about 2-3 hours long. A group of youth, mostly between the ages of 7-10, get together to participate in a variety of activities which appeal to them. Every week is different and the group enjoys trying out new things and experimenting with activities that are not common in their community such as pumpkin carving at Halloween. Other activities include: baking, swimming, body boarding, crafting, etc.

Yoga classes for kids happen once each week and are about an hour and half long. The classes incorporate the tradition and philosophies of yoga without traditional methods and jargon. Each class is structured to include a warm up, practice of postures, meditation and games/storytelling. Every class is different and can depend heavily on which participants attend the class. These classes help to develop a level of flexibility, strength and body awareness. The postures help with concentration and the games work with each participant’s creativity. These classes are most effective and best setup for kids ages 8 and up but can be modified for younger participants. We often do parts of the yoga classes at the beach or as a warm up for other activities.

Biblioteca

The Library is the centres’ glue – it holds everything together in one place and provides resources for the other programs and activities. The Library is open every time a centre is open for drop-ins, and community members are welcome to come in, read books, and explore the resources it has to offer. We also loan out books on an individual basis.

Using books as inspiration for activity ideas, we hold story hours where we will read a book all together and then do activities afterwards that go along with what we’ve read. These can include coloring sheets, crosswords, word searches and games. We sometimes incorporate English vocabulary words into activities such as hangman, twister and other games.

Where Your Donations Go

On this page you'll see 7 different options for donating. Each option corresponds to the monthly costs of that specific item. For example, a $30 donation will buy us craft supplies for a month! Choose the aspect of our organization that best suits you based on your means to give and the value you see in different parts of the organization. We'll make every effort to see that your donation goes directly to the area you select.

Why We Fundraise

Currently, fundraising is our main means of supporting the organization; no one at High Tides is satisfied with this arrangement. We are develping strategies so that we will not require any fundraising for our operating budget, and instead rely on grant funding and social enterprise for stable, sustainable revenue. 

For the time being, we do not have enough historical data on our programs, or the organizational infrastructure to be considered for many grants. This is no surpise considering our first birthday was only a couple months ago. We expect that by the end of this year, we will be in a position access grant funding. As for social enterprises, our fearless executive director will be volunteering her time to pilot revenue generating surf and yoga retreats this coming winter and spring. Based on the outcomes of that pilot, we hope to bring the yoga retreats under the umbrella of High Tides. 

This fundraiser is to nurture our growing organization. It will allow us to demonstrate the impact our programs have to both continue getting more buy in from the community, and win us grants to turn that community support into actions.