Inspirational Bermudian sailing project receives significant grant

Iain Percy, Paul Goodison & Ben Ainslie of the ASSF present $15,000 to the Bermuda Schools WaterWise Foundation © Colin Thompson

The Andrew Simpson Sailing Foundation has awarded a grant of fifteen thousand Bermudian dollars ($15,000.00) to the Bermuda Schools WaterWise Foundation.

The grant will allow an existing schools educational initiative known as WaterWise to continue to offer water safety, seamanship, small boat handling and sailing as a powerful educational tool to a wide spectrum of young people on the island.

The announcement was made by Founding Trustees Iain Percy OBE, Sir Ben Ainslie and Ambassadors Paul Goodison MBE and Chris Brittle on Friday 5th June in Bermuda.

WaterWise is a school based, teacher led cross curricular programme that has integrated science, technology, engineering and maths from the start to help young people in their intellectual, emotional, social and physical growth. The school's entire academic curriculum is woven seamlessly into the ten WaterWise teaching segments and helps illuminate important points they must understand in their training.

Students learn the discipline of the sea from sailing a small boat solo. They gain greatly in their ability to listen to instruction, to concentrate on the task at hand, to keep cool in the face of panic and fear, to be self-confident and to realise they can master something they never dreamed of doing if they work hard to train and prepare themselves.

Many enjoy the challenging experience so much that they ask to be sent to programmes designed to focus on developing their sailing ability further. Their teachers' championing of the WaterWise program comes when they experience seeing a profound transformation in their students during their progress through the programme.

Speaking on behalf of the ASSF committee in Bermuda Tim Patton said ""The goals of the ASSF and WaterWise are nearly identical which is great in that they were developed independently of each other. This grant will allow WaterWise in Bermuda to continue to provide this very successful and highly regarded educational tool. What a fabulous way to commemorate Bart and celebrate his attitude toward kids and sailing."

Iain Percy said "it's an honour to award a grant to this fantastic, educational sailing programme. This is exactly the type of project that we, as a Foundation, want to support. One of our main objectives, and challenges, is to raise the profile of sailing as a valuable educational and career development tool. I am so happy that Bart's legacy will continue here in Bermuda, and with the America's Cup sailing is going to be an even bigger part of people's lives so it's fitting that all its young people will have an opportunity to benefit from that. We will be spending a lot of time here over the next couple of years, and I look forward to supporting the Foundation's impact on the island."

A second round of grant giving from the Andrew Simpson Sailing Foundation will be announced over the next few months and once again will be open to all not for profit sailing projects and community sailing programmes worldwide.

www.andrewsimpsonfoundation.co.uk