The Bermuda Sun – March 19th 2004

Foundation has far-reaching goals
By Patrick Bean


While saluting the broad range of opportunities offered by the international business sector, the Bermuda Sloop Foundation (BSF) has for the past year trumpeted the need for greater balance in serving the training and employment needs of our young people.

The closure of the Bermuda Technical Institute in the 1960s, it is widely agreed, left a void that had broad social implications.

The BSF, rather than merely pay lip service to the issue, is building an ocean vessel that will offer opportunities to learn in a 'hand-in-hands-on' fashion, commonly termed 'expeditionary learning'.

"We laud the successful growth of Bermuda as a first world insurance jurisdiction; we Bermudians lament that we have not done as well on our core social systems," said Malcolm Kirkland, BSF Project Manager. "We have a growing socio-economic and racial divide, observable in the 2001 Census. We have a crisis in personal development, academic and technical education of young Bermudians. We contend that BSF is a critical part of the solution in pursuing our collective goals."

Mr. Kirkland added the BSF would focus on holistic education and development aimed at the 4,900 Bermudians aged 14-20 years through large scale, broad-based and highly integrated sail training programmes aboard a purpose-built teaching tool.

This approach , he asserted, would:
• span growing community, socio-economic & racial divides
• help make the public school system competitive with the private schools
• coalesce a sense of national identity amid the onrush of globalization
• involve young Bermudians in flying our flag in overseas port cities for tourism & international business.

BSF programmes have been designed collaboratively with local public/private providers and further input has come from Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound, a U.S. reform learning model. Locally, there will be eight teams of 30 students, reflecting Bermuda by race, gender and public/private school attendance, engaging in extra-school time over four years that will include overseas summer participation in races and rallies.

All operational areas of the high-tech constructed, simply-rigged sail-training vessel are to be designed for group teaching; engine room, high tech navigation station, catering galley/main saloon and workshop. Each teammate will be required to have a technical major National Training Board certificate.

Rather than draw on the public purse, BSF will be self-sustaining - generating revenue from tuition, group chartering, corporate memberships, alliance retail sales and endowment.

What we know so far...
• A $5m 'floating classroom now under construction in Maine
• Foundation has raised $3,650,000; once up and running, sloop will be self-supporting
• Sloop to provide a broad range of hands-on training for local students aged 14-20
• Seen as a way to fill technical training void and help to instil national pride in young people
• Sloop would fly the flag in overseas ports and boost Bermuda's international image