Sail Birmingham has been collaborating with the RYA for the Together Fund Project for schools in order to provide impoverished students from minority backgrounds with the opportunity to step outside of their comfort zone and explore watersports. All these children from Bridge School and Barford School were unfamiliar with sailing. However, within six weeks, half of them advanced to the point where they could launch, recover and meet the requirements for the stage 1 qualification. The other half were predominantly close and have took up further lessons to achieve this.
King Edwards VI High School for girls has a set programme with Sail Birmingham which has included taster sessions for a set of students to expand their knowledge and skills as well as introduce them to the watersport industry. Following these taster sessions we are now looking to bring out the competitive edge and have a Regatta for them to show case their sailing abilities they have learned. In order to ensure that each student goes beyond their comfort zone and performs to their full potential, we have scheduled fifteen weeks for them to earn their stage 1 and stage 2 sailing qualifications.
In partnership with the local charity, the Enterprise Sailing Trust, we ran a very popular course for pupils from the Nishkam Sikh High School. We took pupils from ‘zero to hero’ in just six weeks and we look forward to expanding this programme in 2020.