The difference we make
During our inclusive sailing adventures people become deeply immersed in an intense, challenging experience in an unpredictable environment. Participants work together in diverse teams to perform tasks with real responsibilities. In our adaptive and enabling environment, everyone is seen and treated as equal and contributes to the best of their ability. On the level playing field we create onboard Tenacious, barriers break down, differences disappear and friendships form.
People leave our voyages with new skills and more aware of their own strengths and capabilities. They gain beliefs and attitudes that help them tackle the limitations in their life. They see the things they have in common with people from different backgrounds, and start to appreciate the ability and potential in others. They leave feeling more free to explore their ability, potential and place in the world.
Our insights
Most of us will face major challenges at some time in our life and often those challenges can result from a variety of reasons such as; physical impairment, mental health condition or ill health. They could also be caused by the barriers in the world we live in, such as discrimination, social or economic disadvantage, lack of social mobility and poor accessibility.
For many of us, those challenges can make us feel restricted or even trapped, making us feel disconnected from people and the world around us.
As a result, we can become emotionally isolated and lose our opportunities to socialise or try new things. Our world can start to feel quite small and we can lose the confidence to explore and find our true ability and potential.
On JST’s sailing experiences, we liberate people from those feelings and limitations.
Our impact practice
We know that our work is transformational for people who sail with us (not just our beneficiaries but also our watch leaders, volunteers and professional crew). But we also know that to expand our work we must fully understand the difference we make and how we can make a bigger impact on more lives. We must be able to:
- show how the activities on our voyages lead to better outcomes for our beneficiaries
- make sense of information we collect about our activities and our impact
- use that information to assess whether we are doing those activities well enough to deliver the best outcomes for as many people as possible
- communicate information about our impact to staff, volunteers, trustees and beneficiaries and to funders and partners.
In 2018 we launched our new Impact Practice. Our aim was to adopt a more structured and robust approach to planning, measuring, assessing and reporting the difference we make. By doing that, we aim to strengthen our appeal to funders and partners and to drive improvements in our activities and the outcomes and impact we deliver.