Pete Goss is a founder and Trustee of the charity ‘Cornwall Playing for Success’. He raised both awareness and funds for the charity through his entries in the 2006 Round Britain and Ireland yacht race and will be doing so again in the Rolex FASTNET 2007 yacht race.

Playing for Success is a national out-of-school-hours initiative set up to provide motivational and educational activity courses aimed at raising literacy, numeracy and IT skills in children who have unrealised potential. They often don’t quite connect with school, leaving them feeling disaffected and demoralised. PFS uses sport to bridge that gap with dramatic results, as Pete explains:

“On a ten week out-of-school-hours programme, the students improve their literacy and numeracy scores by 17 and 24 months in primary and secondary schools respectively. However, the real ‘fairy dust’ is self-esteem, which is carried back to school with long-term results.”

Cornwall has four main centres; the Delaware Adventure Zone near Gunnislake; The Pirates Learning Zone, located at the Cornish Pirates professional rugby club; The Penryn Adventure Zone, located at Penryn College, and finally at Porthpean, which became a permanent centre due to the funds raised by Pete and the team in the 2006 Round Britain and Ireland yacht race.

Children from the charity gave Pete 'messages in bottles', which he dropped off on his journey round the British Isles and Ireland. Some have since turned up as far afield as Iceland! The children used this to learn about tides and ocean currents.

The long-term goal is to use these hubs as bases to spread the initiative right across the county.

Below video ~  The launch of Playing for Success