Hello,

Are you free for a few hours this Sunday morning? If so, please sign up on the link below and join us for our service project with The San Onofre Foundation from 8am-12pm this Sunday, September 30th. We are looking for a few great volunteers so feel free to pass this on to your family, friends, organizations, etc. Volunteers will help Matthew, Miles, Benjamin, Isaias, and Todd with much-needed clean up and refurbishment of the San Clemente, San Mateo, and San Onofre State Beaches and Parks.

http://missioncontinues.org/event/san-clemente-state-beach-park-restoration

We are a group of Veterans working to improve our communities through The Mission Continues program, which provides fellowships to post 9/11 Veterans all over the country. The Mission Continues is a non-profit that helps returning Veterans assimilate into the civilian populace by giving them the tools necessary to go out and secure that first job after the service and to make citizen leaders out of our returning military leaders.

These are a few reasons we chose to join together and raise volunteer support for the San Onofre Foundation and State Parks:

· Camp Pendleton is co-located with San Onofre and San Clemente, and has extremely strong ties with the community. As Veterans we all respect this historic relationship and wish to give back.
· We all share a deep respect and passion for the ocean and waterways and what they offer us. This is one way to help maintain and preserve access to them.
· There are an increasing number of unfunded projects in the CA State Parks budget. We aim to lessen the burden by raising volunteer support and awareness.

PROJECTS
1. San Clemente State Beach – Trail maintenance on the north and south trails leading to the beach. This will entail sweeping and shoveling sand from both of the paved trails leading down to the beach and underneath the train tracks.
2. San Clemente Bluffs Campground – Restoration to the campfire center. This will consist of light sanding and repainting of the benches in the campfire center amphitheater as well as removing dead brush and spreading mulch around the berm surrounding the amphitheater.
3. Butterfly Trail – Trail maintenance and cleanup along the Butterfly Trail at the San Clemente Campground. This will involve cleaning off the trail and clearing low-hanging branches from the rest areas along the trail. We will also be blowing out debris and adding gravel to the edge between the path and the main road to encourage proper drainage and prevent further trail erosion of the bluffs down the hill.
4. San Mateo Creek Campgrounds – Slop Sink Rehabilitation. This will require the clearing of vegetation, roots, and debris from the campsite slop sinks where vegetation has moved in and prevented proper use of the slop sinks by campers as well as proper drainage of the water.
5. San Onofre Bluffs – Curb Painting. We will be sanding, cleaning, stenciling and painting the safety and parking markers in the parking lot along the bluffs.

Thank you for your support. We look forward to seeing you this weekend!

Todd

Todd Gould
719.310.7293

Operation Amped 2012 events

4/27/12 San Onofre State Beach, with SURFER/Grind Media

6/2/12 Ft. Pierce, FL robertwdonnelly@gmail.com

6/16/12 Tourmaline Surf Park, San Diego professorgould@yahoo.com

6/16/12 Long Beach, NY reid_olmstead@yahoo.com

7/14/12 Tourmaline Surf Park, San Diego professorgould@yahoo.com

7/14/12 Long Beach, NY reid_olmstead@yahoo.com

8/4/12 Brendan Borek Surf Memorial with Travis Manion Foundation – first ever appearance by Operation Amped Surf Team!
http://brendansfund.org www.travismanion.org

8/10- 8/12 Camp Pendleton, Surf City Campground

9/22/12 Bolsa Chica State Beach, Newport maydoug@ymail.com

10/20/12 Silver Strand State Beach, San Diego CANCELED

All dates are subject to change. Please use the point of contact listed to verify event details.

Here are a few pics from the Friend Raiser event. It was a great success and we made some really good connections.

Chris Small, one of our most popular volunteers

View the PDF Flyer Here

Watch the awards show live webcast:

Read more about it here.

http://www.surfermag.com/surfer-poll/operation-amped-recipient-of-2011-surfer-poll-agent-of-change-award

Joe and Cecilia Gabunilas Celebrating a Great Day

It's About to Get Really Fun

More inside from our free 3 day surf camp for wounded and injured veterans.

• Operation Amped (Operationamped.com) provides introductory surf instruction for severely wounded, ill, and injured veterans as a form of recreational therapy.
• Since 2006 our teams of volunteers have provided outstanding instruction and a great way for participants to learn the art and sport of surfing!
• Lunch and snacks included. No wetsuit required, we got ‘em for you! Boards and expert instructors provided by the Corky Carroll Surf School (surfschool.net) Families are welcome to attend!
• To sign up, or for more info, contact: Operation Amped: Doug May (maydoug@ymail.com or Bill Konegni (imabulldogg@yahoo.com)

All without conditions. They don’t ask to hang banners, be mentioned in press releases or media mentions. In fact, they go out of the way to do it in the most low key way possible.

When you’re shopping for surf gear, you’ve got a lot of choices. Billabong’s gear is some of the finest made. If that’s not reason enough, why not choose the company that steps into the breach for our young veterans?

Thank you Billabong for Making this Surf Camp Possible

More photos of billabong’s generosity here