Tom Hewitt II (Elevating Communities Through Surfing, The AIDS Epidemic and Supporting Young African Surfers) - Episode 1141

Behind The Shield

James Geering

Health & Fitness, Mental Health, Fitness

4.9 • 667 Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2025

⏱️ 95 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Tom Hewitt MBE, is founder and CEO of Surfers Not Street Children. He has worked in the field with street children in Africa for over 28 years. In 1998 he founded the Durban Street Team which went on to be renamed Surfers Not Street Children in 2012. Tom was awarded and MBE by HRH Queen Elizabeth II in 2011 for his work with street children in Africa.

Tom is perhaps most well known for his successful advocacy campaign to end the forced removals of street children in Durban, South Africa. These round-ups used to take place to “clean” the streets ahead of international conferences and events. He called for compassionate responses to street children based on psychosocial care.

Tom is also well known for his model of fusing surfing with mentorship to empower street children in Durban. He assisted the national Department of Social Development in South Africa with its development of new policies around working with street children there. Tom has visited and often assisted street children projects in many different parts fo the world.

https://www.surfnotstreets.org/

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I'm extremely excited to announce a brand new sponsor for the Behind the Shield podcast, and that is
0:05.1	Rescue One CBD. For any of you have listened to this podcast for the last eight years, you would have
0:10.7	heard my own personal journey from using prescription pills after a knee surgery to finding
0:16.5	CBD and having incredible success with that. Now, I'm sure everyone listening is fully aware
0:22.7	that we have an epidemic when it comes to the use of nicotine pouches, dip, and other products.
0:29.8	Now, to combat this, John from Rescue One has developed a nicotine-free pouch called the Rip
0:35.6	pouch. It's the first and only pouch that contains
0:39.3	CBG, neutropics and B vitamins for both energy and mental clarity. And as with all of their
0:48.0	products is tested to ensure it is 0.000-0% THC-free.
0:56.4	So completely trusted for anyone in uniform
0:59.5	and they always send a drug test with their products
1:03.6	just to give you guys peace of mind.
1:06.5	Now the pre-sale for this incredible product has just begun
1:09.8	and goes on until October 1st.
1:12.7	So if you go to Rescue1cbD.com, you can register for the presale and make sure it ships the moment it is available.
1:22.3	Now, on top of all that, Rescue One is offering you, the listener of the Behind the Shield podcast, 15% off your order if you use the code BTS, as in Behind the Shield.
1:32.8	And you can find all of their products.
1:35.1	You can find all of the testing and understand why this truly is a product that you can trust by going to Rescue1cb.com.
1:49.8	And you can listen to my conversation with John on episode 1011 of the Behind the Shield podcast.
1:55.4	Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome back onto the show Surfer and the man behind Surfer's Not Street Children, Tom Hewitt.
2:03.7	Now, if you haven't heard my first conversation with Tom, it is episode 251, and I highly
2:09.8	recommend you listen to that first. In the second conversation, we discuss a host of topics
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from James Geering, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of James Geering and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.