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BACKGROUND

The National Sea-and-Sand Institute is situated in Hermanus close to the southern-most tip of Africa. It is unique in that it is the first organisation of its kind to have been established (1971) by a group of youthful South African citizens. Initially a Life Guard Training Centre was set up, with the main focus to teach our youngsters to offer a Life Guard service on our beaches. And so the organisation kicked off very successfully and has now developed into a life-skills educational training centre.

As a result of many years’ training of youth outside their comfort zones, Sea-and-Sand has made the following observations:

Due to hormonal changes after puberty young people think, act, speak and smell differently. Although youngsters can cope extremely well physically, pyschologically they are still not mature enough to face an adult world.
During the Great Trek a 16-year old girl was already a mother and a 17-year old boy a father, today we have dubbed people in this age group “teenagers”. As wealth increased and academic education became more sophisticated after the Great Depression, South Africans became materialistic. This has had a catastrophic impact on the early adult development of modern youth (16 years and older).

Underdevelopment of early adulthood, paired with overprotecting and thereby instilling parasitic-type characteristics in our children are the reason why Sea-and-Sand, in conjunction with Sparks Esterhuysen, established the Institute for Pre-Adults in 1996.