- Somerset Youth & Community Sailing Association
(SYCSA) has the experience of running free sailing tasters for our local Community.
- The first time we did this was at our first
Open Day in 1998. This event was so popular that over 200 new sailors took
up the opportunity of a free 30 minute taster session.
- In conjunction with Durleigh Sailing Club
(DSC), we have continued to offer this free day each year since 1998.
- Our Open Day has become an annual Bridgwater
event, growing in popularity each year, until at our 12th Open Day in 2010,
we attracted 460 new sailors onto the water and over 800 visitors to the reservoir.
- This demonstrates a growing interest in
sailing amongst the whole of our local community.
- In 2010, we extended the short tasters into
a one week Extravaganza for 9 local primary schools.
- We gave 180
wildly enthusiastic children, the chance to take to the water for half a day
to try this exciting, exhilerating out door sport.
- For many it gave them the experience and thrill of a lifetime.
- So after seeing the pleasure, fun and satisfaction it gave
to the children, we knew we had to find a way of repeating this project in
2011.
- We also knew we had to widen the project to offer sailing
opportunities to more children and include adults.
- The aim of the “Enable All” project is to provide
free, accessible opportunities for all comers including those with
special educational needs, with disability and for those people who live in
economically disadvantaged areas of Somerset – in particular the wards
of Victoria, Hamp and Sydenham in Bridgwater, on our doorstep. These wards
feature in the top 10% most disadvantaged wards in the country.
- Our new project for 2011, “Enable All to sail”,
will provide extra free sailing taster sessions and longer sailing lessons
for over 500 extra people.
- Thus widening the sailing opportunities to include more
schools and adults from our local community.
- Once we have developed the project, we intend offering the
opportunity each year for the foreseeable future.
- This project will enhance the lives
of so many people in our community.
- This project dovetails perfectly into SYCSA’s objects,
which are: “To provide training and recreational facilities, which promote
and encourage the sport of sailing and practices of good seamanship among
the people mainly - but not exclusively - of Somerset, for the purpose of
advancing their education and in the interests of social welfare within the
meaning of the Recreational Charities Act 1958.”
- Without this grant, "Enable All" will sink and
take the aspirations of many people with it.