This May weekend saw the first important step in the twinning between the Mascalzone Latino Sailing School and Crotone Sailing Club. It began last January with a meeting with the head of the Calabrian club, Francesco Verri, who was visiting the Acton Basin naval base. The link between the two clubs was aimed at reinforcing the training offer of the Mascalzone Latino Sailing School and providing an important resource for setting up and orientating a similar project at the Crotone Sailing Club.
The Crotone club focuses particularly on the Optimist and Laser classes, and is already active in integration through sailing of disabled children (with the help of a para-Olympic athlete of the calibre of Massimo Dighe, who represented Italy in the 2012 London Olympics) and intends to make the qualities of its land and structures known internationally to propose itself as a place for winter training of important teams, and now was also planning to implement and promote a project for young people at risk in the Crotone area.
After the stage for directors and students at the Mascalzone Latino Sailing School which is just ended, the Crotone Sailing Club will begin, in collaboration with associations, parishes and local schools, the first activities for disadvantaged young people, offering them the same common objectives of training, recovery and developing faith in themselves through sailing.
The exchange programme with the Mascalzone Latino Sailing School continues with the next step in June, when a group of four or five young Mascalzones will be hosted by the Crotone club to continue their training programme in the waters of the Ionian Sea and transmit their own experiences to their counterparts in Crotone.
The Director of the Mascalzone Latino Sailing School, Antonietta De Falco, said after this first experience with the kids of the Crotone club: “Today to ambitious projects came together, both for the South, both aimed at giving back a future to young people who, if put on the right road can really get for they want to go. Today the kids of the Mascalzone Latino Sailing School have a new friend to help them on their way.”
Francesco Verri, president of the Crotone club, said: “We need to look at the best experiences and excellences to find inspiration and advice. With the help of the Mascalzone Latino Sailing School we will work with the kids of the suburbs of Crotone to allow the sea to enter into their homes. Sport and sailing, on the Naples-Crotone axis, speak the language of equality.”