OnBoard officers presented dedication awards by Sir Keith Mills

by Susie Nation-Grainger on 13 Nov 2010 The outstanding achievement and dedication of three of the RYA’s OnBoard Development Officers (ODO’s) who work to introduce youngsters to sailing and windsurfing, was acknowledged this week (10 November) at the Annual OnBoard Conference dinner held at the Rose Bowl, Southampton.

Sir Keith Mills, founder of TeamOrigin, the main partners of the OnBoard scheme, joined Riki Hooker from RS Sailing to present the 2010 RS Sailing RYA OnBoard Awards. The three special awards for Performance, Commitment and Innovation were presented to those officers who have gone the extra mile working for the RYA OnBoard grassroots sailing programme.

Picking up the ‘Performance Award’ was Mark Belshaw who oversees an extremely active OnBoard area in West Cornwall working with 11 OnBoard clubs. Amongst Mark’s achievements are his imaginative and successful OnBoard festivals including the OnBoard Travellers Series which ran at four venues across Cornwall throughout the Spring and summer seasons, and additionally the team racing festival Feva Frenzy and his Topper the Class festival.

The ‘Commitment Award’ was won by Leon Ward, the OnBoard Officer for Bristol and Gloucestershire who has arranged a series of sailing sessions for inner city Bristol schools, helping to change the perception of sailing for youngsters of all ages. Leon has also recently taken on OnBoard work in the Weymouth, Portland and North Dorset area.

The final award for ‘Innovation’ was awarded to the Steve Mitchell. As OnBoard officer for Central and East London his enthusiasm and commitment resulted in the London Youth Games growing to be one of the biggest Youth team Sailing Regattas in the country and the biggest ever held in London.

Steve was also personally responsible for arranging groups of youngsters from London to join some young sailors from Weymouth for special visits to the 2012 sailing venue where they met Paralympic sailors Alexandra Rickman and John Robertson.

Steve said 'My award was totally unexpected but I feel really chuffed to have been recognised. This year has been fantastic and hopefully things will continue to get even better next year and will keep on growing with even more youngsters out on the water.

'I couldn’t have achieved what I have without all the help and support from all the volunteers so I would like to thank all those who gave up their time to help with these projects.'

Victoria Lenz, RYA OnBoard manager said 'I am delighted to recognise the hard work and dedication of these OnBoard Development Officers. Their commitment, innovative ideas and dedication are pivotal to the success of the OnBoard programme and I am very much looking forward to hearing their plans for 2011.'

RS Sailing who proudly sponsored the awards kindly donated specially commissioned trophies to mark their achievements.

Sir Keith Mills said: 'I feel really proud to have supported OnBoard for the last few years. To inspire the next generation to take up sailing on this scale has been amazing.'

Run by the RYA, OnBoard is a grass roots programme which introduces sailing and windsurfing to young people aged 8 to 18, through schools, youth groups and training centres.

Over a ten year period OnBoard aims to introduce a minimum of 500,000 children to sailing and windsurfing in the UK, converting over 10% of them into regular participants. So far it’s nicely on track.

www.rya.org.uk