Ventures to promote sail training.
Our little organisation, China Sail Training Association has a Chairman, Ming Fan and a Vice Chairman, Andy Lai. We have many other helpers. Despite the name China in the title, we are actually based in Portsmouth. There is not a lot of sail training in China; that is why we are starting in the UK, where there are 200,000 Mainland Chinese students. Last year, we entered the first Chinese team in a Tall Ships’ Race. We only had enough funds for a Bavaria Yacht, but we had a larger percentage of Chinese on the boat, than Team Dongfeng, of the Volvo, who only has two Chinese winch grinders and six Frenchmen most of the time. 23 Chinese students went off with us last year. It is a start. here is some video evidence : https://vimeo.com/114303568
Oh and here are a couple of shorter clips for those who have a short attention span:
More Chinese are off to sea in 2015. But we, of China STA, take anyone, regardless of race, religion, gender, age or sexual orientation. We aim to encourage some Somalis, we know, to go off on the high seas this year.
As mentioned in previous blogs, we are helping the Atyla with many things. And they are helping us. Human are generally collabarative, social animals. To understand this, is one of the educational outcomes of sail training. We are having some interesting shore side events on the Atyla in 2015, especially in Canary Wharf, London and at the Southampton Boat Show. We still have slots for other corporate functions, so please contact us , if you want an interesting venue for networking. http://www.atylaship.com/events
We will be pumping our more multi media stuff and videos over this year, because this is a great way to explain what we get up to .Here is a link to our media man: http://www.jmpphotographer.co.uk/ Have another video clip that he made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuWzLwHorwo
In order to promote sail training, we have started a facebook page and web site to list where Tall Ships Events are. Never assume that another person knows everything, and the purpose of our site is to inform the woirld where the public can step aboard a Tall Ship for free ( preferably bringing a young adult who can then be enticed to give sail training a go) https://www.facebook.com/groups/tallshipsevents/ Do join the group for updates. Share our page. And save our website as a favorite : http://www.tallshipsevents.co.uk
My personal main focus has been to use sail training for leadership and management development. After all, the youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow. As I mentioned in the previous blog, I was very fortunate to have been given the oppotunity to learn leadership, on a large sail training ship, at a young age. Most management trainees of the large firms of accountants, solicitors and bankers never get the chance to learn leadership in this way. The best they get, is to go off to Wales on a course, where they are challenged to take oil barrels over a ficticious chasm ( which is actually just two lines of bright safety tape on the grass). Would you readers not agree that this is mediocre compared with taking four other young adults, out to the fore deck to stow a sail in the howling rain – even better if it is in the dark? To that end , we are networking to get at decision makers of large corporates, who would like better trained middle management and leaders of their companies. What we have on offer is also suitable for aspiring politicians. I attempted to get some British Chinese politicians interested, but they are too busy chasing power and money.
Finally , as a daft aside, one of my new Chinese apprentices, actually formally asked me to be his Master. When he said this, I had these images in my head:
I have a better beard, and more hair, than Master Po. And I have not gone blind yet.