Dragon Boat 2025 - The Run Down!
Our third year of dragon boating… and maybe our best one yet?
More young people with Down’s syndrome involved than we’ve had in any year, and so many returning paddlers!
We started the day with a fantastic warm up from our friend Teacher Tommy T! It got everyone warmed up, laughing, and kicked off the fun atmosphere for the day.
Then we raced! Three races for each team across the day, where we paddled as fast as we could.
One of the best things about this event is that our young people can all get involved. It’s so inclusive and accessible, and two of our young people who came along originally had just planned to cheer from the sidelines, but couldn’t help but get involved!
Watch our highlights video to see just how much fun we all had, and hear from some of our participants.
This year, the money raised will be put towards our new series in Learning for Life, called Consent and Decision Making. This series is all about empowering our community to understand what decisions they get to make in their lives, when they should be involved in joint decisions with parents, carers, or educators, and when decisions are made by others on their behalf.
We know that this is something that parents can sometimes struggle with, especially as our young people grow up and we need to let them be independent. So in helping our community to learn more about decision making, they will be better able to know when they can make decisions, and how to do this.
Making decisions for yourself is a key part of being independent, and something that adults often take for granted. For our next step in support our community to grow up safely and independently, we need to provide this knowledge around decision making.
“She’s really kind and can be really understanding, but sometimes it’s a bit tricky for her to understand me…
Learn and Thrive helps us… by giving us resources to help her learn how to understand us better and how to deal with situations better.
It’s really nice to be able to be here together, and do the dragon racing together. It just feels really nice knowing we are supporting a charity that’s gonna help Freya and loads of other people like Freya grow and learn how to live in the world.”
Hattie, Freya’s sister (pictured here side by side)
This year’s dragon boat race raised just over £4,700! But we still need you. These resources are a lifeline for so many across the country, and are helping our community become active members of society as they grow up.