With glasses raised against the picturesque backdrop of the San Francisco Bay, guests toasted the one-year anniversary of Rocking the Boat’s expansion to California, with one supporter proposing, “It’s just so much more than a boating program!” Your generous support has made clear that you share that sentiment, and I am deeply grateful.
A recent email from Venus M., a boatbuilding student who participated in the early 2000s, echoed this idea. “I’m especially excited to reach out, as I had the opportunity to participate in Rocking the Boat during high school, and it left a lasting impact on me.” Venus is now a second-grade special education teacher in Harlem and scheduling a series of visits for her class. Her students will be among the first to enroll in Rocking the Boat’s latest evolution—programs specially adapted for students with learning disabilities. It is fulfilling to know that the experience Venus had as a participant is reverberating in how she teaches today.
Her seven-year-olds will have a highly sensory experience, folding paper boats then testing their buoyancy and sanding blocks of wood in the boatshop, surrounded by 17’ boats in various stages of completion—those in early stages resembling enormous fish skeletons! They will board small boats, grab hold of oars and feel the Bronx River’s current beneath them. Hooked, they may return with their families on summer weekends to participate in Community Rowing or Sailing. Then, as sixth graders they will have the opportunity to join our Middle School Program and experience all of Rocking the Boat’s activities: retrieve and analyze water samples, get to know woodworking tools, memorize points of sail, and take turns as skipper and crew.
With the transition to high school comes the opportunity to enroll in the afterschool Youth Development program and commit to their favorite track. As Boatbuilders, they could design, shape, and fasten white cedar planks of a Whitehall like the one they may remember first seeing in the shop. Or, if they stick with sailing, they may have experiences like this year’s sailors wing-foiling with a professional racer from New Zealand and pass their US Sailing Level 1 Small Boat Instructor certification course. For a change of pace, they might head down to Central Park and sail a model sailboat, where Rocking the Boat runs the renowned concession, now seven days a week. They may follow in the footsteps of the Environmental program this year, growing nutrient-extracting seaweedor planting pollinator-friendly natives. Ten years after their first introduction to the organization, they will graduate and head off to college or trade school like all 14 of our seniors did this year, with over $160,000 in scholarship money and social work support that will follow them well beyond high school. Rocking the Boat is most certainly so much more than a boating program.
Thank you for considering a renewed gift to support our life-changing work.
