A must read example of the true spirit of sailing

I went to college in Colorado, a long way from the ocean but suprisingly, still a place where if you look hard enough you can find sailors. I was very glad to come across this article in the Denver Post about the Community Sailing of Colorado program. CSC operates a nonprofit summer program and camp for boys and girls between the ages of 8 and 17 on Standley Lake in Westminster and Cherry Creek Reservoir in Aurora . The Denver Post article talks about how the program is not just teaching sailing , but also providing children with important life lessons - essential traits that all sailors are familiar with : teamwork, patience, independence, taking responsibility, safety. It's a heartwarming piece...and a welcome break from the rock star bluster that so often surrounds the sport and pastime of sailing. Suburban kids made up about 60 percent of the 475 students last summer at CSC. The rest were inner-city youths, as well as students with physical or mental challenges. I thought one quote concerning the 40% of children not from a traditional "suburban" background was particularly powerful, and very much in keeping with the spirit of this weblog.

"So many kids look at it (sailing) and think, 'Well that's something just people with a lot of money do,"' said Stacie Gilmore, executive director of Environmental Learning for Kids, a program for children from low-income or single-parent households. "But if they see that avenue is open to them, then they start thinking, 'Well, maybe I can go to college, too, move away and live in a dorm."'