Oh, you’re the girl who surfs, a local stranger said to her.
In 2007, Arizona-native Katie Rock had recently finished law school at the University of Michigan and taken her bar exam. At the time, she was indulging in a well-deserved respite in beachside Nicaragua before starting at a major law firm in Washington D.C.
She looked around her. She noticed that, fair enough, she was indeed the only girl in the water.
As a lifelong athlete and former tennis player for Gonzaga University in Washington State, Rock surfed, jogged and hiked every day during her time there, much to the confusion of local observers.
“The entire town was so fascinated and perplexed by me,” recalled Rock, 31, who currently lives in Manhattan Beach, “like, what is this girl doing? What are you running from?”
A group of inquisitive local girls, between ages 7 and 10, approached her and asked why she was surfing. “It’s so dangerous, and it’s for the boys. Aren’t you afraid?”
Rock, who has studied Spanish since an early age, soon learned that these girls, despite their close proximity to the water, didn’t even know how to swim. Outside the home was the boys’ domain.
This encounter planted a seed of curiosity in Rock’s mind. “Chicken or the egg: Are they not playing sports because they don’t have that much status in society,” she explained, “or would playing sports help their status in society?”
She began researching relentlessly, learning that active girls are statistically less likely to get pregnant or be in an abusive relationship and more likely to be happier, confident and achieve higher levels of education. Rock immediately became obsessed with the idea of using sports to improve these girls’ lives.
Fast-forward five years to today, Rock’s socially-conscious sporting bag company, Activyst, has just successfully crowd-funded its first major project, in just three days to boot: helping Soccer Without Borders in Granada, Nicaragua build a soccer field and support its community center for girls’ programs.
Using IndieGoGo, a popular online crowd-funding platform, the company is already en route to selling enough Activyst gym bags to fund its second project: supporting a girls’ soccer team in Uganda by incorporating vocational training classes into the soccer program.
The company’s name, Activyst, is a fusion of the words “active” and “catalyst” because when girls are active, Rock explained, the activity is a catalyst for change in their lives. The name encapsulates the mission statement of Rock and two other cofounders, her former college tennis teammate, Leigh Orne, and former colleague from the law firm, Blair Warner.
After her 2007 Nicaragua trip, Rock stayed at the law firm in D.C. for about three years. In 2010, she returned to Nicaragua—this time not on vacation, but for research through the Pan American Health Organization, the Latin American arm of the World Health Organization. She spent about a year carrying out dozens of interviews with school children, educators, nonprofit and government leaders as she tried to identify the deeper issues and barriers that kept local girls from sports.
What she discovered was enlightening: Organized activities for boys and girls were both similarly lacking in Nicaragua, yet boys flocked to the streets to play soccer while girls stayed home.
“It comes down to spaces,” Rock explained. “Guys feel comfortable outside the home, but it’s a safety issue for women. There was lots of perceived fear when we talked to girls.”
The second major barrier, she found, was the lack of parental permission for girls to partake in outside activities due to fear for safety. But she learned that parents are not necessarily against sports or letting their daughters leave the home, as long as there is a transfer of protection to someone else they trust—like school.
“I came to the realization that there are people out there who really want to create change in this area but are having difficulty doing so because of a constant challenge of funding,” Rock said.
So Rock began thinking, tapping into her entrepreneurial spirit. Wouldn’t it be fun, she thought, to create awareness about the importance of girls sports while generating funding for these organizations who are doing great work?
After a year of rigorous prototyping in both Nicaragua and the States, Activyst’s signature product, “the Active Bag,” was born. With compartments for various workout necessities, like yoga mats, running shoes, water and even electronics, the Active Bag—and the rest of the line, including a tote bag and makeup bag—is made from macen, a super durable, waterproof fabric Rock discovered in Nicaragua.
Rock explained that Nicaraguans use macen to make hammocks and to transport heavy grains, among other purposes.
“They call it ‘the material of the people.’ They use it for everything,” Rock said.
Rock said the outpouring of support Activyst received during its first campaign has encouraged the team—the three cofounders and social media manager, Monica Gauthier, a Hermosa Beach resident—to push for more. After the next $25,000 goal is met, they plan to continue the movement throughout other similar regions.
“It was very emotionally moving to see people come out of the woodwork and show support,” Rock said. “We need to keep the momentum going.”
