A Rotary programme for developing sailing talent has broadened. 

 
What started out as a development programme for promising young New Zealand sailors – delivering a number of Olympic champions – has turned into a joint venture with Yachting NZ to expose yachting to a wider range of youngsters, many from low-income areas.
 
Three members of the recent New Zealand Olympic Yachting team at Rio are past winners of the prized Rotary Club of St Johns ‘Youth Yachting Scholarship’, first established 20-years ago, six years after the club was established.
 
The 2002 winner, Jo Aleh was/ is the current Olympic Champion, sailing in the 470 class with Polly Powrie. Tauranga’s Jason Saunders, the 2008 winner, will be competing in the new mixed-gender class with Gemma Jones, the daughter of the legendary wind-spotting, mast-man, on the America’s cup winning Black Magic, Murray Jones.
 
And Josh Junior, the 2006 winner, from Wellington is sailing in the single-handed Finn Class, made famous by Russell Coutts.
 
“Historically, the St Johns Rotary Trust supported one youth sailor to attend CORK (Canadian Olympic Regatta, Kingston) each year,” says Stuart Thomas, Youth Coordinator, Yachting New Zealand.
“Since 2014, the scholarship has supported two young, talented New Zealand sailors to attend their class Youth World Championship regattas. The scholarship subsidises the cost of attending the international event, making it more affordable for the recipients to compete.
“The scholarship focuses on young sailors who have a possibility of making the NZL Yachting Trust Youth Team, in the following years, by allowing them to gain experience at an international level.”
The St Johns Rotary Club and Yachting New Zealand have broadened their relationship recently to cooperate in the ‘Have-a-Go’ project, which seeks to expose youngsters from schools in the Glendowie and Glen Innes suburbs, currently, to the challenges and thrills of yachting.
Rotarian Gary Key, one of the initiators of the scholarship, adds: “’Have-a-Go’ was introduced last year to students from St Pius School, and this year will include Glendowie College, Glen Taylor School (4thyear of participation), Stonefields School(4th year) St Pius   (2 nd year), and Point England School.
“We are endeavouring to add this project to our ‘Gardening in Schools’ and ‘Dictionaries in Schools’ initiatives, to name a couple; as well as our RYLA Programme which has grown rapidly in recent years, following our being selected to run the project in 2015.
“The RCOSJ Inc see these projects as part of developing our young people to have a variety of stimulating, useful and challenging experiences in their formative years.”