Community Boating Center, Inc.

CONTACT:

1641 Padanaram Avenue
New Bedford, MA 02740
508-992-1900
www.communityboating.org

Peter Durant, Executive Director

DESCRIPTION:

On a hot, humid day in 1995, after visiting seven children in a sweltering New Bedford tenement, social worker JoAnn Clark was walking home across the Fairhaven Bridge when she caught sight of seven small boats. Seven boats, seven kids—why not put them together? So in 1998, the Community Boating Center was incorporated, and now at its tenth anniversary, it has six youth summer programs, an after-school program, an adult program, and related programs in radio-controlled model sailing, ice-sailing and windsurfing. With 58 boats they serve 670 youths and 54 adults annually in regular programs, plus several hundred more in regattas and other events they host. Their Summer Youth Sailing Program, a six-part mentorship project designed to keep children off the street and on the water, serves 600 kids each year; Youth Cruising introduces seven and eight-year-olds to the water; Learn-to-Sail introduces children to sailing, emphasizing teamwork and cooperation. The Optimist class, the Teen Cruising class, the Intermediate and Advanced sailing classes all build skills and confidence. In the Adult Sailing Program participants explore the marine environment and learn to navigate in Buzzards Bay. Enrollment in these programs is rapidly expanding, so funding for scholarships is ever more urgently needed.

(2008: HUMAN SERVICES: Children & Youth: General)