The lovely James is volunteer sailing crew on the boat. Here, he shares a little about who he is and how he came to be involved with the charity, hoping that others may follow this path and enjoy supporting participants as much as he has …
I was born in California and have lived in the UK since I was 11. This has endowed me with a peculiar accent which most folk I meet for the first time ask me about. Some ask if I’m Scottish, some Irish, some even ask if I’m Canadian. When I explain that I’m a Yankee Yorkshireman, they nod. When I say I sound like Graham Norton, they nod more deeply and tend to giggle.
For work, I run two businesses. One is an antiques centre in York (theantiquescentreyork.co.uk), the other is a boat in France that takes affluent Americans on beautiful canal cruises (boutiquebargecompany.com).
Neither makes me rich, but both allow me some freedom of time and location. I try my best to use this time to pursue some advice that my dad gave me when I was young – to ‘do worthwhile things with interesting people’. My success in this respect has been mixed over the years but, looking back, it’s when I’ve followed my dad’s advice, that I have the best and most proud memories to look back on.
One of my passions is skiing, specifically disabled ski instruction, which allows people with mentally or physically restricted lives to live free and enjoy the thrill of speed and excitement in the fresh mountain air. Another activity I look back on and reflect as being a wonderful investment of time has been CatZero.
I was introduced to CatZero via a friend, Dave Price, who crossed the Atlantic with ‘Danny’, one of the founders at CatZero. What started out as an interesting challenge for us to support a fledgling and intriguing charity has morphed into a pillar of our values and existence for over a decade now.
Make no mistake, the work that CatZero does and the results it achieves is not for the faint-hearted. It takes folk with challenging and often outright harrowing lives and equips and invites them to see a bit further ahead in life, with their chins raised, and then to go that way, to a better place of their choosing.
It is a team driven, role defining, responsibility giving, goal setting, sleep depriving, mind expanding, frequently nausea inducing(!), deep searching, and very hard-won experience.
Therein lies its beauty. CatZero is a big hammer that tackles issues that demand it. Every year I leave the boat, I do so with greater admiration and appreciation for the participants and the team who do it all year long.
My advice is really simple. Support these guys with your time or money. Neither will be a wasted investment.
Once CatZero, always CatZero!
A big thank you to James and all the volunteers across CatZero.