Meet our
volunteers.

I have been a Consultant Paediatrician in the NHS for over 30 years. My sailing experience started because of a school headmaster giving me the opportunity to learn to sail, including on the Norfolk Broads. Sailing has given me a lifetime of experiences and friendships.

As a skipper on the sailing weeks it is great fun for me to sail on the Norfolk Broads again and work with young people, sharing my passion for sailing.

I was invited 3 years ago to be a skipper for Enterprise Sailing. I work in sales with no formal educational experience.

This year I was joined by three crew members; one was a young man returning from the previous year in the role of a Young Leader, the other two had complex emotional needs and were initially desperate to return home. By the end of the week we had grown together as a team. What blew me away was the love and care they demonstrated for each other. They had each other's backs, they supported each other's ups and downs, they were there to wrap their arms around each other when needed.

They learned many new skills. They learned to sail. Initially horrified at the thought, they took turns to cook breakfast for each other, something they had not done at home. Even the "disaster" of handing in their telephones at the start of the week became quickly understood, with one of my crew telling me, without prompting, that he'd got it: he was enjoying playing games, talking, making new friends when otherwise he would have been locked onto his device.

I have been volunteering with Enterprise Sailing Trust for just about 10 years and I have been living in Norfolk for nearly 20 years and a very experienced Norfolk Broads sailor including an RYA Senior Instructor for Norfolk-style keelboats.

I have helped out with Enterprise in the capacity of skipper and, more recently, in a supervisory role. You will generally see me helping out at bridges and for casting off and mooring. Other tasks include route planning, risk assessment and generally helping out any new skippers. The experience that Enterprise gives young people is a great opportunity to try something truly different and out of the ordinary.

I have sailed on the Norfolk Broads since 1982 on a Hunters boat and fell in love with the boats, the broads and sailing. My husband and I have been involved sailing and teaching scouts to sail on the broads for many years and we taught our children to sail and are both RYA keelboat instructors.

Every year I am bowled over by comments such as "Miss, it is so quiet" - they are soon spotting birds, looking at the dark starry skies, and taking the tiller and learning to sail. I love to see them grow as a team, hoisting sails, stowing kit away, learning knots. I join the expedition as an extra hand lending my experience to sailing in this unique place.

I have been working in education for 23 years. My role has been in administration. Contact with learners has been minimal. When the opportunity came up to support the Norfolk Broads Sailing trip last year, I jumped at the chance to support, and was not disappointed - I loved it. Not only getting to know learners in a completely different environment.

Learners do not have access to their phones, so seeing them communicate with each other; play card games; run around in the park and be children again is lovely to watch. Learners are pushed out of their comfort zone; little things from encouraging them to try food they wouldn't normally eat to learning to tie their shoe laces.

I have done 13 or 14 Enterprise Sailing trips now. Initially I was very nervous about skippering a boat with challenging young people but after the first trip I fell in love with sailing on the Norfolk Broads and, more importantly, I saw the effect it had on the youngsters. We have had difficult years, mostly very good years, but always rewarding years.

I have spent the first night talking to a child who was so far outside his comfort zone that he just wanted to go home and seen him finish the week laughing and having fun with the others, his comfort zone expanded a bit further. I spent another late evening with a lad from another boat who was being difficult for his skipper. I spent half an hour showing him the star constellations and then had an hour of his life history. After that he was a changed person for the week.

I have had a fascinating evening chatting with two lads who had autism and ADHD but who displayed this in very different ways. It was great to see them bond more and to discuss coping strategies to help them manage the negative impacts this can have on their behaviour.

I've sailed with a number of different sailing weeks on the Norfolk Broads with teenagers over many years, and have been involved with Enterprise for the last eight. It has been a privilege to be part of a group of exceptionally caring leaders and I continue to see each year the transformative impact that these holidays have on the young people who attend.

Many come with uncertainties about themselves, low self-worth, anxieties and attitude issues. The wonderfully positive changes that I have witnessed have been so moving and humbling as we send on the young people more confident about themselves with new skills mastered, more relaxed and outgoing in their relationships with a wide range of others from different cultures, ages and backgrounds and more motivated to make a positive impact in the world they live in.