Sail Training

Members of the Sail Training Youth Committee (STYC) travelled to Istanbul to participate in the International Youth Council's (IYC) inaugural meeting, hosted by Sail Training International at their annual conference, held this year in Istanbul, Turkey.  STYC's Chairman, Ben Martin, represented STYC (UK) at the IYC meeting and presented a paper to the international committee outlining STYC UK's aims for the future of youth involvement in Sail Training at an international level. 

STYC UK's proposal

The meeting was held on the Sail Training ship Concordia and was attended by representatives from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, UK and USA.  Each country's representative presented a paper created through their own National Forum, and from this the IYC discussed what their mission should be and how they proposed to develop and achieve their aims.  The outcomes of this inaugural meeting were presented to the International Sail Training community at the closing plenary of  the conference.

IYC Mission:

"To bring young people from the international community together, working for youth, by youth, to provide fresh ideas for the future of Sail Training"

The following is a brief overview of the 6-step plan developed by the IYC:

• Engage in the support of the self-assessment and evaluation toolkit. The self-assessment toolkit, to be developed in collaboration with the STI steering group and vessel operators, aims to provide a practical resource for operators outlining what they do and how they can improve it.
• Expand the network of contact between youth, by engaging the development of National Sail Trainee Alumni Associations.  This has been implemented in several European countries and we are awaiting reports to examine whether we can implement a similar association in the UK.
• Create a questionaire that will measure the satisfaction of Sail Training as a personal development experience. This is to be implemented in the Tall Ships Races 2010 to selected A, B, C and D category vessels.
• Serve in an advisory capacity to STI's web development and social media incentives.
• Identify, prepare and deliver two youth-orientated and youth-led workshops at the STI conference in Novemeber 2010 in Stavanger.
• Establish and post a working calendar that commits the IYC members to the timely delivery of its projects.

Feedback from this first meeting in Istanbul has been very positive, promising an exciting year ahead for the IYC.  STYC aims to play a pivotal role within the IYC to achieve our ultimate goal of improving the future of Sail Training both in the UK and around the globe.