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In the days before Covid put a stop to all such activities around 1700 children were seen annually. In October 2019 the Dartmouth
Food Festival arranged for 90 Key stage 2 children from local primary schools to spend a day attending a series of workshops. The RNLI provided an exercise on coastal safety in the RNLI visitor centre. The visitor centre was always designed to be an education centre as well as a shop and the original D class lifeboat from Southend is available for children to dress up and climb into while watching films. Although the shop is at present open under restricted opening hours the education side is closed due to Covid. Storm Force is the junior membership of the RNLI for 7 to 11-year-olds and can be accessed online or at the RNLI visitor centre. There are around 14,000 members and the Dart lifeboat station hosted two events in 2012 and 2016. The education volunteer’s role was to design and coordinate the event. Members of the Dart crew also had
RNLI roles as lifeguards and on the flood relief team and each brought their equipment to the day. The Dartmouth coastguard team also very successfully showed the youngsters how to abseil up a cliff face. The lifeboat crew took part in demonstrations ashore and afloat.
Covid has meant that school visits stopped completely, both for the children’s safety and that of the education volunteers.
Covid has meant that school
visits stopped completely, both for the children’s safety and that of the education volunteers. Presentations over Zoom became the only way to continue. Until recently an education volunteer had to produce all their own material but the RNLI then produced excellent material for Key stages one and two, promoting the RNLI water safety messages. Hopefully they
will continue to produce such material annually. When it works, Zoom is very
successful. It is safest to have a run through with the lead teacher involved as Zoom is not necessarily the program that all the schools use. It also means that the schools requesting a presentation can be anywhere in the country and I have Zoomed to Camborne, Truro and Ilchester, as well as locally. The numbers of children spoken to are approximately the same as before Covid In 2020 RNLI Youth Education changed. The team is now known as Education rather than Youth Education, as the remit has changed to include adults of all ages. The team is also being merged with the current Community Safety team and will be called the Water Safety Team, all working to the same objective - delivering water safety messages to those groups of people most at risk.
John Fenton Dart RNLI Lifeboat Press Officer
News, details of launches, photographs and videos can be found on the Dart station website
www.dartlifeboat.org.uk
or the station Facebook page
www.facebook.com/dartrnlilifeboat
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