Boost your youth outreach efforts with expert support from Onboard. We’ll give you skills and tools to help build vital relationships, empowering your club to share the thrill of sailing with more young people.

OnBoard’s easy-to-follow structure promotes access to sailing and windsurfing for 8 – 18 year olds, supporting the development of key life skills like confidence, communication and teamwork through sailing and fostering a sense of independent adventure.

My Blue Pass (MBP), a programme run by The Stour Blue Water Pass Trust in Manningtree, have used OnBoard to support their engagement efforts for several years. Aided by generous resource sharing from the Stour Sailing Club, the team at MBP offer taster sailing sessions for local primary schools, providing opportunities to those who wouldn’t otherwise get the chance to experience watersports.

Although they initially struggled to convince headteachers that there was value in these sessions, OnBoard’s promotional material helped them break through. With OnBoard’s resources, My Blue Pass was able to articulate its ‘teaching more than just sailing’ ethos and demonstrate how they could help schools deliver outdoor sports that support personal education.

“The OnBoard promotional material helped us talk about confidence, teamwork, communication, problem-solving, adventure, and risk,” explains Stephen Jones, a Trustee for MBP. “This helped get local headteachers on board so we could arrange a meeting with all of them. The RYA seal gave us credibility too.”

Having had success with this approach, My Blue Pass continues to work hard on this element of their outreach.

“We have a brilliant liaison officer who builds relationships with the schools and arranges their taster OnBoard sessions,” says MBP’s Chief Instructor Rachael Hurst. “She’s very good at communicating how the sessions link to the national curriculum.”

Their efforts have been rewarded. Thanks to their hard work and the support of OnBoard, My Blue Pass now work with multiple local schools and see a fresh round of children from these schools each summer.

“We now work with seven local primary schools in the immediate area offering a free taster session on a dinghy, which the children learn to sail themselves,” says Stephen. “At these sessions, we look out for children with potential, who are enthusiastic, and children who may not otherwise get opportunities like this. We offer these children funded or part-funded places to sail in the summer and work towards certifications.”

MBP now welcomes over 170 schoolchildren each year for taster sessions. They run these sessions to OnBoard’s framework, having learnt just how fun and engaging children find this approach.

“Jenn Miller recently ran an Onboard Instructing Team CPD for us,” says Rachael, who has over 20 years of instructing experience but still took away valuable insight from the training. “This was an excellent day and gave our instructors more confidence to engage with students in a different way.” 

“One of the most important things is to make it fun,” Stephen adds. “Don’t make it too teachy – children need to have fun to stay engaged.”

The My Blue Pass team hopes the children who are invited to join them following their OnBoard taster sessions will come back each year, completing certifications and ultimately becoming instructors on the Stour themselves. They’re close to seeing this come to fruition, already mixing older children into their OnBoard sessions to help the newer sailors.

Do more to engage with schools, youth groups and parents in your area and get OnBoard today.