Yachting through charity

Graham Dalton explains to madforsailing the secret of his sponsorship with megabank HSBC

In the UK, for example, the HSBC Education Trust supports the Technology College Trust and in particular language colleges in underprivileges areas. They also support the work of Young Enterprise, a scheme which introduces young people to business, Head Teachers into Industry, which helps train senior teachers in management, plus youth arts groups such as the National Youth Theatre, National Youth Orchestra, etc.

"The money raised will go to to assist underprivileged children in education in countries as diverse as Brazil, to India to the UK to New Zealand," says Dalton. "And it will go to individuals or to organisations who are working very hard to give children opportunities they wouldn't otherwise have. HSBC is already involved in many thousands of programmes around the world. They help the street kids in Brazil who live in sewers with education and blind street kids in India."

Exactly how HSBC Education Trust plan to put their ambitious fund raising international fund raising program together around Dalton's Open 60 project remains to be seen. Certainly with Around Alone starting and finishing in North America with stops in Europe, Africa, New Zealand and South America, the international aspect of the trust's reach should be well catered for.

"I have my management team that will work with HSBC. The bottom line is that I have to go and get on with the sailing side of it. There is a yacht race and there is a lot of work to do there. They will put the leverage together. But I will work out a programme for what I am doing with them up in the UK or wherever else in the world that I can assist, whether it be fund raising or helping kids or whatever."

So Dalton's project has been funded by the trust in a kind of spend-money-to-make-money way. "This was funded out of London. It is a small point, but I see it as a large point personally. I don't see this as a sponsorship at all. I see this as a partnership because we share a common vision on something that is perhaps not commercial."

Playing devil's advocate I am intrigued as to why this requires a state of the art race boat? "Well there's the technology," Dalton explains. "It's able to publicise their work and on the back of that we're then able to raise money to give young people more opportunities. The other thing is that when I pitched, I said to Sir John [Bond] with the money we raise, internationally it is acceptible to say pool 20% and that can self-liquidate your costs. And his answer was categorically 'no. Every cent raised will go into the trust. We will pick up the tab'.

"So it is two fold with the boat - it is the messages that young people get through sport - the endeavour, dealing with failure, dealing with success, striving. It's the technology message. With the internet you can teach maths, environment, navigation, you can teach different cultures - there are so many things that can spin off the back of it. They have found, as other people in other countries have, how do you reach young people, how do you change their mindset, how do you inspire them? And they've found one of the best ways to do that is through sport. So here they can learn about all the technology. We can videostream straight off the boat straight onto to the website." Dalton speaks with considerable passion on this subject, that is clearly close to his heart.

For an update on the boat see page 3...