Skip to content

Nisa’s charity donation helps rowing club to grow

A significant donation made recently by Nisa’s Making a Difference Locally charity will help Chester’s oldest rowing club to attract new members and teach more local people to row.

Royal Chester Rowing Club were delighted to receive the £17,000 donation, which allowed them to purchase new equipment including a new coxed quadruple sculling boat, blades, cox box and a number of rowing machines for on-land training.

The Royal Chester Rowing Club is an inclusive, volunteer-led rowing club for people of all ages and abilities to get involved in rowing, whether for fitness, to compete, or just for social interaction with like-minded people.

Michal Palamarczuk, coach at Royal Chester Rowing Club, said: “We were delighted to receive the donation, which made a difference to the club’s junior element; enabling us to purchase a lighter, stronger boat for our J14/15 girls and boys. It also enabled us to free up another boat for our adult squads, allowing us to work with a larger number of people.

“The new boat is state of the art and is something for our younger and less experienced rowers to work up to. It also motivates the teams to be more competitive, as it allows them to perform even better than when using older models.

“The donation has also enabled us to upskill some of our budding junior leaders who aspire to become volunteer coaches, which in turn will allow us to work with even more people wishing to join the club.”

The rowing club was selected by Making a Difference Locally to receive the donation following a suggestion from local Nisa retailer Peter Sykes, whose daughter Isabel attends the club.

She said: “I like rowing because it’s different to other sports, and it makes a big difference to me. Due to my autism, I have lots of bad days, however I feel much better after a rowing session. The repetitive technical skills required for rowing make sense to me, unlike many other people.

“Being a member of the rowing club is very important to me because I get to meet people of different ages, and this has enabled me to make a few friends as I feel out of place in my own age group.

“I never imagined that I would enjoy and participate in any sport but even though times can be difficult, I couldn’t imagine my life without rowing.”