Young sailors from County Antrim Yacht Club have been making a positive difference to their community by fundraising £1,500 in just under two years.
Junior captains Amy Armstrong and James Corbett, alongside vice captains Hannah Todd and Michael Rock, led the club’s juniors to co-ordinate a series of successful and innovative fundraising activities.
The Junior Committee, under the guidance and leadership of Gavin and Claire Pollard, have been fundraising since they joined together in 2018.
Their success was celebrated when Amy and James, who represented the Junior Committee, were crowned Young Volunteers of the Year at this year’s RYANI Annual Awards.
To date, they have donated £500 to the Friends of the Cancer Centre and are the main sponsors of County Antrim Yacht Club’s (CAYC) Spring Series 2020 after they donated £250 to Commodore Paul Abraham.
Gavin Pollard, club coach and former captain at CAYC, said: “The juniors have been hugely influential in co-ordinating all their own fundraising activities, in-house and within the community, with truly ingenious and powerful ideas.”
Their successful fundraising efforts included making Christmas presents, which were bought and posted as far as Spain.
In March 2019 they arranged the All-Ireland premier of Maiden — the film of Tracy Edwards and crew’s Whitbread Round the World Race — which was screened in the club and attracted VIP guest Professor Louise Dubras, who was hugely influential in the original Maiden project.
“The juniors have been very creative in their approach to fundraising and at CAYC we are all very proud of what they achieved,” Pollard said.
“With their sponsorship of the Spring Series this year they will have ownership of the event but they will also get a great sense of achievement by contributing and giving back to the club in a way which they never thought they could.”
