Steve Ells

For over 30 years Steve's coaching has enabled young people to develop sailing skills to high levels & helped to develop some young people's coaching skills to enable them to become instructors, giving many of them employment in the Leisure industry. When the Hackney Centre moved to Stoke Newington, Steve helped to secure £2.9 mill lottery funds to establish a state-of-the-art Watersports centre in the heart of Hackney. Unlike similar projects, this one completed within budget & on time. This centre enables local children to take part in watersports & over 300 children use the centre every week, including Steve's brainchild, an oversubscribed youth club. A respected Senior Instructor, Steve is a member of Sailability - an organisation dedicated to helping disabled people take part in sailing. They cite the Centre as an example of one enabling disabled people, including blind pupils to learn to sail. He does any job which needs doing, unblocking toilets, repairing boats, clearing algae, fixing the IT problems & negotiating with contractors. He wrote all safety procedures for the Centre. Significantly there has never been a serious accident at the Centre. He is probably the person most relied upon by other members of staff & respected to the extent that Committee members at other centres send their children to him to learn to sail! For the last six years he has managed all of the above in addition to caring for me, left with agoraphobia after a breakdown.