Recovery, Renewal and Growth

The World has been through a pandemic, which has left communities, sports and individuals ravaged by the effects. We need to look to the future and build hope with a positive attitude.

Recovery

During 2020, the Club’s income fell dramatically as, like some many other organisations and businesses, we were shut down by government policy to deal with the crisis. The number fo paddling sessions we held were much reduced and there was no opportunity for competition for our members.

The whole World has been effected by this Pandemic, Sport has taken a battering as participation was halted, Canoeing events were canceled and sessions suspended. As lockdown restrictions were lifted, we began sessions for our existing paddlers and although these were never going to cover their cost, we felt it was important to get back to action as soon as possible.

Not only did we lose our club sessions, we also lost work with schools, our partnership sessions at Osterley Park with the National Trust, whom themselves have been badly affected.

The first step of the process is to recover and the Club and we are doing very well, we have come out of lockdown and opened up all our sites and the numbers attending are good, constant and rising, we have attracted a number of new members. But, we face a tough Winter, with more restrictions and the possible effects of people’s incomes falling as unemployment rises and people’s hours are cut. So although we are doing well at the moment, we need to be vigilant as individuals, but we also need to be careful as a Club and plan carefully, and Project 21 is about putting in place policies, motivation and aims to ensure we do recover, that we attract new members, and we get even better at what we do

Renewal

We have had to overhaul a lot of what we do and the process of thinking about this has improved the way we work and they way we think about what we do.

We are taking on new and better facilities, we need to make the most of these and we need to ensure they serve, not just us well, but the communities they are based in. Coming online in 2021, will be the new facilities in Southall. These facilities will provide us with opportunities to expand what we do, to improve the way we do them and to grow our community.

Southall is not the only area being invested in we are working with our partners in NW10, to improve the facilities there and what we can offer, it is early days, but in the short time we have been at NW10, with just a container we have done well. The Club also has plans to improve and develop Harefield, making wider use of the facilities on offer, again early days and plans for 2020 were scuppered by Covid-19, but let us look ahead to what we can do and the potential the site offers us.

We also have ideas to expand the offer at Osterley for 2021, so watch this space as they say.

Project 21 is laying the foundations for our renewal, setting out the vision for the future

Growth

The key to our success, we need maintain a steady growth, which we have done and continue to do, we need more members and we need people to be more active more often, to engage with more people and more organisations. Project 21 is the means by which we aim to achieve this growth, we have set targets across the Club at each site for each discipline, for how we interact with the local and wider community.

This is not a project for one year, but for every year, with new targets, new ideas and fun ways of ensuring we achieve year after year.

The Future

As we just said; Project 21 is not just for one year, it is going to be an on going programme of activities, events and challenges with new aims and objectives set each year.

Project 21 will be the driving force to our success, to become one of the most active organisations in the Country, to simply be the best we can, and we can be the best. Please help us by supporting us, getting involved with The Sharks, give us a call on 07951 770241 or email us at canoeing@thesharks.org.uk.