The Buddy System

Ask a diver what the most important piece of equipment is to have on a dive, and you will get a single response: a buddy. Not only do dive buddies look out for one another in the alien word of the deep, but each one also enhances the other's experience. Buddies provide encouragement as well as a sympathetic ear. Our dive buddies, regardless of experience level, make us better divers. It is simple, fundamental idea, the idea of teamwork. Diveheart instructors Kevin Vaughn and Chris Cote, however, have shown how such a simple idea can make the lives of troubled youth extraordinary.

Vaughn and Cote are the masterminds behind SCUBA E.T.C. (Empowerment Through Challenge), a program whose mission it is to use the physical and mental challenges involved in gaining SCUBA certification as a vehicle for changing the lives of youth at risk. The temptations for the youth of today can be overwhelming. Even young people from seemingly stable environments can have pressures upon them that are daunting. Getting them to focus is the key. Give them something to work for, a role model to trust in, and it might be all that's needed to allow them to turn their attention elsewhere.

The program's origins date from when Vaughn was approached by the Northern Illinois Special Recreation Association (NISRA) and asked to develop several adaptive SCUBA experiences, one being for youth at risk. All participants would be young people from ages 13 to 17 who had been deemed by an agency to be at risk of falling into trouble. Their issues could range from anything such as drug use to broken homes to possible gang involvement. Trained by Diveheart as an H.S.A. instructor, Vaughn already knew the therapeutic benefits of SCUBA. The question was could this translate into an experience that could benefit youth faced with these other challenges. Diveheart president Jim Elliott, who had introduced Vaughn and Cote to the people at NISRA, felt certain it could. “The mission of Diveheart has always been to raise the level of the water for everyone,” Elliott maintains, “We had done it for hundreds of young people with disabilities, and we were ready to assist Kevin and Chris in bringing it to the young people faced with these challenges.”

Elliott would be close by as Vaughn and Cote coordinated the first trip. After several setbacks, the first E.T.C. group visited the islands of Turks and Caicos in 2005. Things did not go as smoothly as planned. Vaughn realized that what was missing wasn't more supervision, necessarily, but more commitment. He felt that he needed to build a sense of teamwork among the participants and to prepare them both mentally and physically for the challenge. Diveheart's model was a fine template, but Vaughn recognized that different life challenges required different treatments.

Enlisting the aid of psychologists to design team-building activities as well as a physical fitness trainer to promote conditioning and developing an education component to run side-by-side with the training, Vaughn believed he could provide the 2006 participants with the focus lacking from the previous trip. Each session included instruction in the fundamentals of diving and also physical and mental training. The participants' commitment was stressed. An unexcused absence from a session resulted in dismissal. The initial results of the approach were, to say the least, astounding.

Vaughn heard participants saying that they found they could work through their communication problems, avoiding conflict. The ultimate goal was to immerse them in the culture of their host, the island of Turks and Caicos. The 2006 E.T.C. participants visited classrooms and had dinner with young people from the island. “After they began talking, you couldn't pull them apart,” Vaughn says. A three hour tour of duty cleaning the beaches of the island also followed each full day of diving. Participants saw this as their contribution for the generosity of their host, not a punishment. More than that, it gave them a respect for the environment. “It makes me mad to think someone would just throw something on the beach,” was a typical comment Vaughn heard from the participants.

When you meet Kevin Vaughn, he doesn't strike you as an emotional man. You can, however, hear the passion in his voice when he speaks of the conclusion of this year's trip. When awards such as best diver and best team leader were presented on the last night, two recipients decided to share, to split the money they received. “One girl,” Vaughn says, “didn't even have the $27.00 to buy her own books, and she gladly gave half of her $100.00 prize.”

Some dive buddies can take you to places others can't. Some can teach you skills you never knew existed. The dive buddies Kevin Vaughn trains, however, will give you a piece of themselves. These are the dive buddies any of us would be honored to be alongside of under the water. While to a large extent Diveheart's intention is to instill a sense of autonomy in the individual, it is also to show that teamwork allows one to fly higher, dive deeper. The E.T.C. program has shown that this isn't just a good strategy for diving, but a philosophy that can turn a life around.