Now in its 20th year, Charlestown-based Courageous Sailing Center remains committed to introducing local youth to the sport of sailing, even as its eclectic range of offerings for adults continues to grow.
“Our mission is to serve youth, but we do have a very vibrant adult program, which is one of the major sailing programs in Boston,” said Courageous Sailing Center Executive Director Mary Yntema. Established in 1987, Courageous Sailing Center was a collaboration between the City of Boston and South Boston sailing enthusiast Harry McDonough that aimed at teaching sailing to youths from all ethnic and economic backgrounds free of charge, while also providing them with valuable lessons in teamwork and other life skills. The program was set up as an independent 501(c)(3) entity. Over time, the city became less involved with the Courageous Sailing Center’s daily operations, although Yntema said the organization still maintains a close relationship with the city. Courageous Sailing Center now serves approximately 1,000 youths each summer and has grown beyond its original Navy Yard location to include two additional sites in Jamaica Plain and Dorchester.
“The ultimate vision is to provide kids with a first-class sailing experience,” Yntema said. “We don’t want to say it’s good enough because it’s free or they should settle for less because it’s free.”
As part of this commitment, Courageous Sailing Center secured a major grant in 2004 to buy high-performance 420 sail boats for its youth program, which Yntema said are the same as those used by major yacht clubs and prep school and colleges.
“For a free, urban youth program to provide this is really fantastic,” she said.
In addition, Courageous Sailing Center continues to provide opportunities for youth who have completed the program by employing many of them as instructors for the summer program.
Besides sailing and life skills, Courageous Sailing Center stresses environmental stewardship by instilling the importance of protecting the harbor in its participants through activities like fishing and water testing.
“To be a successful sailor, you need to be an environmental steward,” Yntema said. “The fact that Boston Harbor is accessible and safe for recreation is really almost one of the wonders of the world.”
While Courageous Sailing Center first began serving adults as a way of supporting its youth program, its adult membership had grown to 300 members and is now one of Boston Harbor’s major providers of recreational activities for adults.
“As an adult, you could spend every day of the summer at Courageous, and there would be something fun to do,” Yntema said. “After work you can run down to Courageous, you can go out for a couple of hours and someone else takes care of the boat. It’s an incredible benefit of living in Charlestown.”
Courageous Sailing Center also sponsors fundraising events that benefit the youth program. These events, including the College Bowl Charity Regatta & Tailgate Party and the Make-A-Mark Gala, are social outings that appeal to more than just sailing enthusiasts. “People will attend because it’s a great party, even if they have no interest in sailing,” Yntema said.
During the four years Yntema has served as the program’s executive director, she said Courageous Sailing Center has experienced about 60 percent growth in service provided to children annually. Now, as she prepares to step down from the position in the coming months, she believes the best is still ahead.
“It’s been four years of success and accomplishment, and I’m confident that Courageous will continue to do as well, if not better, this year and into the future,” she said.
Courageous Sailing Center offers special rates for adult membership through March 19. Registration for Boston residents for the summer youth program begins April 2 and April 16 for everyone else. For more information, call 617-242-3821 or visit www.courageoussiling.org on the Web.

CAPTION: Pictured, left to right, are Christine Amisano and Dr. Domenic Amara, principal of the Warren-Prescott School.

By allowing parents to play in active role in how the school is governed, the Warren-Prescott School has managed to capture the true essence of Charlestown by creating a community that constantly strives for improvement.
“It’s a neighborhood of people that are simply trying to make it better for everyone,” said Christine Amisano, the mother of eighth-grader Nick Margolis who could best be described as a parent activist. “The idea [of the Warren-Prescott] is people in the community taking a responsibility for the kids of Charlestown.”
Beginning in 2001, the Warren-Prescott experienced an influx of parents who were looking for a school with great expectations. Warren-Prescott principal Dr. Domenic Amara welcomed the fresh ideas and encouraged parents to participate in helping to shape the future of the school, which has resulted in a number of unique initiatives. Parents now serve alongside staff members on the School Side Council, a group that assists Dr. Amara in making decisions for the school. In 2004, he school also launched the Warren-Prescott Foundation, a legally recognized non-profit entity that raises money to fund activities that the school couldn’t otherwise provide. And, beginning that same year, the school expanded its kindergarten through fifth-grade curriculum to include additional grades, starting with the sixth. This year, the school is preparing to graduate its first eighth-grade class.
Since coming on board as the school’s principal in 1980, Dr. Amara has maintained an open door policy and welcomed input from all parents.
“The fact that there is an open exchange is the key,” Dr. Amara said, adding that the school’s staff, administration and parents all have a voice in the decision-making process. “The collaboration is such that the major decisions we’ve made have been by consensus.”
Dr. Amara attributes much of the school’s success to parents’ contributions. “A lot of what we’ve got here is what parents have been able to give up in terms of political or other support,” he said, adding that many parents volunteer in the classroom and the school’s front office.
Amisano, meanwhile, credits Dr. Amara for creating an environment where ideas from parents and the school’s staff and administration are valued equally.
“It comes down to an excellent administration, an excellent professional staff and parents being involved on many different levels,” she said. “[Dr. Amara] is the one who set the stage for it. What he has enabled the school to do is just tremendous.”
One of the Warren-Prescott’s greatest achievements is attenuating the similarities between students who come from a wide range of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, rather than the differences. “We have to recognize that kids coming into school are getting support at home from different cultures,” Dr. Amara said.
Amisano added, “In this setting, [students] celebrate the differences.”
And with this diverse student body comes the unique task of engaging all parents and making them active participants in their children’s learning experiences.
“Our challenge is to how do you make every family a valued partner in their child’s education,” Amisano said, adding that parents are encouraged to reinforce lessons learned in the classroom at home. “It’s critical to the child’s growth, as well as the whole school community’s growth.”
While Dr. Amara and Amisano credit Mayor Thomas M. Menino for making family involvement a real priority for Boston Public Schools, they both recognize that the budget can’t provide for all the unique programming that the Warren-Prescott aims to offer. To supplement this, Warren-Prescott Foundation was launched several years ago as a modest fundraising effort. Today, the Foundation boasts international accounting firm Price Waterhouse Coopers as its official business partner. It has a long-term goal of establishing a $2 million endowment, interest from which would support supplementary educational programming.
Among the programming that the Foundation now provides is a puppet-making class for students at the Charlestown Working Theater. The Foundation has also enabled the school to hire an arts enrichment assistant who works with students on individual portfolios and also oversees them on the construction of stage sets for the Warren-Prescott’s upcoming production of the musical “Annie.”
“The school department can only provide us with so much,” Dr. Amara said. “If we want a different kind of cake, we have to add more ingredients to the recipe.”
With all the unique opportunities offered at the Warren-Prescott, it’s not surprising that parents were often disappointed to see their children graduate from the school after the fifth grade. Dr. Amara subsequently described the decision to add the sixth, seventh and eighth grades as “natural evolution.”
Amisano believes that this allows the school to further reinforce the values that the Warren-Prescott intends to instill in its students. “Not having kids have to transition after the fifth grade provides a continuation of the school culture,” she said.
Today, Dr. Amara has no plans to retire, while Amisano’s son will graduate from the school in the spring, But they both hope that the work that the collaboration between the school’s staff and parents will continue long after they have both left.
“If there’s one legacy we want to leave behind, it’s a culture where we say a lot more was possible than we thought,” Dr. Amara said.

The Family Nurturing Center of Massachusetts will launch a parental education and support program in Charlestown this month, which will hopefully be the first of many programs for the neighborhood, according to Sue Parker, program manager for the non-profit organization.
The parental support program, which is tentatively set for a March 12 launch and will run through the end of June, brings together between 12 and 15 families, many of whom are residents of the Bunker Hill Housing Development. It is offered free of charge to parents with children ages 6 and under in an effort to help reduce parental stress. Children will be placed in play groups according to age, while the parents will be taught skills that will enable them to be better parents. A group of 12 facilitators, including Boston Housing Authority employees and teachers from the Tiny Tots preschool, will oversee activities that involve both parents and children. MissionSafe Charlestown has agreed to allow the use of its office at St. Catherine of Siena Church and will act as a community partner in the program.
Parker said the program has been in the planning stages since last August, when she began meeting with representatives from local organizations, including MissionSafe Charlestown, the Boston Center for Youth & Families, the MGH Charlestown HealthCare Center, the John F. Kennedy Family Services Center and the Charlestown Substance Abuse Coalition and Charlestown Connects.
“Our hope is after the first program, these groups will work together to the keep the program going,” Parker said.
Last week, The Massachusetts Children’s Trust Fund, the state’s leading agency dedicated to the prevention of child abuse and neglect, announced that it awarded a grant of up to $5,000 to help launch this program in Charlestown. State Rep. Eugene O’Flaherty and Sen. Jarrett Barrios had previously indicated to the executive director of The Massachusetts Children’s Trust Fund that Charlestown was in need of such resources.
“I am happy to join with the Children’s Trust Fund in announcing this grant to Family Nurturing Center of Massachusetts,” said Sen. Barrios. “This money is a good investment in the Commonwealth’s future by helping parents provide their children with the care support, and protection they need to grow into tomorrow’s productive adults.”
Rep. O’Flaherty was similarly pleased to see the new program come to Charlestown.
“Any sources directed at MissionSafe, St. Catherine’s and the Bunker Hill Housing Development are welcome and necessary given the amount of problems we’ve had to deal with recently,” Rep. O’Flaherty said.
Meanwhile, Anne Carrabino, director of programming and training for MissionSafe Charlestown, hopes to see many similar programs in the future.
“I hope this is the beginning of a long partnership that will help address the needs of children and families in Charlestown,” she said. “There’s a huge need for this sort of thing here.”

Status of the dewatering facility
While the City of Boston’s catch-basin dewatering facility proposed for Alford Street has been the topic of ongoing debates within the community – especially with the extension of the public comment period - it has yet to come to a formal vote before the CNC.
At Tuesday’s meeting, it took the center stage, with some members adamantly opposing the project by saying that it would be of absolutely no benefit to the community, while others were reluctant to take a stance at that point and cited a need for more information.
CNC member Judy Brennan struck a compromise by suggesting that the CNC send a letter to the city saying, in so many words, that the Neighborhood Council opposed the project until more accurate adequate information could be provided.
The CNC voted in favor of Willet’s suggestion, although three members abstained from casting their ballots.
Only time will tell how the city responds to this inquiry.

CNC welcomes Brian Wadman
This week, Brian Wadman was elected by a majority vote as the Neighborhood Council’s new Precinct 6 representative. He replaces Kelly Tucker, who was recently elected to an at-large seat.
A Charlestown native, Brian was named one of the new youth workers in December, and when asked what he hoped to accomplish as a CNC rep, Brian said he hoped act as a liaison between Charlestown’s youth and the rest of the community.
Brian also added that the hoped to soften the CNC’s image in the eyes of some residents.
We have had the pleasure of speaking with Brian on several occasions and believe that he will serve the community well in this role.
Best of luck, Brian.