Making dreams come true
The Laura Dekker World Sailing Foundation has been established to provide programs for young people to develop life skills like teamwork, self-confidence, responsibility, creativity, and leadership. The challenge of expeditions in foreign lands and long-distance sailing aboard our sturdy training vessel provide a uniquely powerful and extremely effective environment for the personal development of children and teenagers that come from all sorts of backgrounds.
The concept, in short:
Kids and teen between 8 & 16 years old can participate in the programs which Laura and Sander are running. For younger kids there short summer camp voyages and teenagers are looking at spending 3-6 months onboard and participate full time in the runnings of the ship.
While sailing the focus shall lay primarily on building life skills and character that can be learned through sailing. Participants will be involved in all aspects of the trip – preparation, cooking, maintenance, navigation, watches, sails, provisioning etc. Through the trip, we wish to achieve some core life skills, like team work, responsibility, self-confidence, determination, discipline, become aware of our environment & experience the pleasure of simplicity (how less can be more).
Of course, you will also learn about life at sea (i.e. sail handling, ropes, navigation (celestial and modern), understanding the weather, maintenance (rope work, woodwork, engine…).
However our main focus is building confidence, determination, team work and responsibility as these are very important things in life.
