East Manchester Community Boat Project
Education & Skills
We want to run four training cycles for up to 32 volunteers so they can reach national standards to crew the community boat.
About this cause
Our project provides a high quality canal narrow boat experience, specifically designed to accomodate wheelchair users and also disabled and disadvantaged groups across a wide range of user groups. The project has been successfully offering this service for 23 years. The current boat named community spirit 2 replaced the original boat earlier this year. Our latest boat design is based on the needs of of over 60 user groups who provided feedback during a major consultation excercise. The community boat is one of the safest and modern afloat in the UK. It is fiited with a unique remote steering facility to empower wheelchair users and ensure that they get maximum enjoyment from their time on board. Our constitution states that this facility will be provided free of charge to all users.
How this cause brings people in the community together
We have an aspiration to enable up to 1800 passengers per year to enjoy a free, educational and fun day on the water. In order to achieve this we need to increase our volunteer numbers to run more trips per year. With our current crew numbers we are already running at capacity. The training programme will provide the required trained crew to achieve our aspiration. None of our volunteers are paid