mission and history
mission
Rocking the Boat participants develop pride, purpose, and possibility by learning the unique and lifelong skills behind building and rowing wooden boats, sailing, and restoring the Bronx River. We create community, teach through transformative experiences, and make nature available to everyone, inspiring young people to determine their own future against a backdrop of systemic inequity.
Rocking the Boat is committed to helping its participants:
- Stay in high school until they graduate or receive an equivalency diploma
- Enroll in college or trade school and be prepared academically and emotionally to succeed there
- Develop technical skills such as sailing, boat handling, navigating, chart reading, carpentry, sample collection and testing, scientific observation, and recording data, all of which reinforce STEM concepts and put them into a practical context
- Develop soft skills such as leadership, communication, teamwork, problem solving, and critical thinking
history
Founder and Executive Director Adam Green (far left) with an early group of Rocking the Boat participants.
Shortly after being launched in 1996 as a volunteer project in an East Harlem junior high school, Rocking the Boat worked under the aegis of New Settlement Apartments, which provided both workshop space and students for the cornerstone Boatbuilding Program. Incorporated as an independent 501(c)3 non-profit organization in 2001, Rocking the Boat continued to cultivate relationships with a wide variety of community-based, educational, environmental, cultural and historical organizations, and expand the size and scope of its services. Namely, the On-Water Education Program was added in 2002, the On-Water Classroom in 2005, the Job Skills Program in 2006, Community Rowing in 2007, and the Sailing Program in 2015.
