[upbeat music]
- When I was graduating from high school,
was a local artists from our hometown asked me, said,
"What is your dream?"
I said, "My dream is to be successful enough
that all I will have to do is to spend my time fishing
and teaching fishing."
So he painted this picture of me
and I'm standing in the water and I'm fishing.
Most of the decisions that I have made
that were good decisions
were usually made in the boat.
Skip ahead many, many years,
I did go to school to become a teacher.
And I find myself as a discipline alternative director
for a local school district.
And I have kids that are
coming to me being kicked out of school and are coming to me,
they're good kids.
And the common thread that I found through all of that
was that they did not have active pro engagement
in their lives.
The time where you had two parents spending time
with their children seems to have dissipated
over the last 20 or 30 years.
So I thought what can I do to bring
these families together?
- MAN: Look, Lisa caught a fish.
[laughing]
- SHANE: I want something that I can teach the parents
how to spend time with their kids.
So I thought, "I'll use fishing."
Welcome, folks, everybody
and thank you for turning out today.
I'm Shane Wilson.
I started Fishing's Future in 2007.
It's a volunteer organization.
And it was simply a--
it's not to teach fishing.
That's the icing on the cake.
My whole foundation and philosophy
was to teach the parents how to spend time
with their children outdoors.
- Well Shane and fishing future
has just been transformational
when we think about getting people, in particular families
into the out of doors with their nearly 30 chapters
around the state.
And they've touched over a million people to introduce
them into the joys of fishing and ultimately
that becomes a portal into the great outdoors.
[crowd chattering]
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- Melding families together through the tight knot,
if you will of fishing.
It's brilliant.
Teaching kids that skill will help them
throughout their lives.
There's so many different avenues
that all connect.
And really it just starts with a fishing pole.
- It's making a huge difference for forever.
It's everlasting differences.
I mean, we have the opportunity to teach the kids
and their parents together.
Everything that fishing future teaches
goes into the family,
into their everyday lives.
- Watch this.
Bring him in, bring him in, you got it.
[upbeat music]
- And thanks to Shane,
there are so many families that are better off
and fishing is better off
and we're so lucky to have him.
- Shane is my hero.
I mean, he is many people's hero, actually,
in the sense that he started something
from just an idea and a passion and he went with it
and it is changing lives every day.
It's changing lives forever.
It's changing our environment.
It's saving our world.
I mean, he just has this passion.
- Anything that Shane is involved in,
people want to join,
they want to help and so we're incredibly fortunate
to have Shane out there out front helping to
introduce families to this wonderful sport of fishing
and ultimately the outdoors.
- And that energy and that passion,
it is infectious
and he's able to use that
to his advantage and to continue his message.
- He is you, he's me.
He is the epitome of what happens
when the average person cares.
[birds calling]
[upbeat music]