Thank you for your interest in becoming our next Chief Executive Officer. Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) began as a response by the surfing community to the dreadful state of our beaches.
Today, the ocean remains in danger, and we don’t have much time to protect it. Case in point, this October, we witnessed and helped put a spotlight on horrendous scenes of sewage pouring into the sea below our office in St Agnes.
In response to these challenges, at SAS, we create inspired, motivated ocean activists everywhere, each one of us committed to protecting the what we love.
Our vision is for a thriving ocean and thriving people, delivered through daring, impactful campaigns that are fuelled mobilising individuals and communities that seek to defend and restore our waterways, our coastlines, and the ocean. We shout loudly, gathering the evidence holding government and business to account.
Over the last 30 years, SAS’ vocal campaigns on this issue have played an essential role in driving sewage pollution to the top of public, political, and media agendas, and we represent a trusted perspective when holding water companies to account. For example, our Safer Seas Service is a water quality monitoring app that now includes bathing locations on rivers, where the pollution problem is often most acute – crucially, allowing us to keep people safe whilst connecting with them to take action.
In recent years, we have also had good success campaigning to raise awareness and tackle plastic pollution. We are working with over 800 Plastic Free Communities across the UK and our Plastic Free Schools programme reaches over 1.2 million students, with progress celebrated through the Plastic Free Awards.
We’ve also evolved our beach cleans. This summer we ran our second Million Mile Beach Clean, with over 263,500 volunteers cleaning 1,043,916 miles across beaches, streets, rivers, parks, and trails, removing a total of 738,494 kilos of rubbish.
This is all made possible by a passionate HQ team of 26 working in partnership with our regional reps, members, and volunteers, all of whom collectively represent the canary in the coalmine when it comes to seeing the impact of sewage pollution on our beautiful beaches and rivers. We have undergone significant growth in recent years, and we couldn’t be more excited for our new CEO to develop our culture and strategy to catalyse SAS and communities across the UK for the next decade of action and impact
If you’re as excited by this unique opportunity to improve the health of our oceans as we are, then we’d love to hear from you.
Thanks,
Jon Khoo, Chair