Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust

The Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust is a national organisation whose primary activity is taking young people in recovery from cancer, between the ages of 8 – 24, on four-day residential sailing trips that are fun, supportive, social, positively challenging and life changing. The Trust was launched in 2003 with the aim of rebuilding confidence after cancer, using the intervention of sailing as therapeutic recreation to support, empower and inspire young people to embrace their future with optimism. In 2003, our first trip sailed from the Isle of Wight with 5 young people from Great Ormond Street Hospital. Since then, with growing recognition that sailing, as a therapeutic intervention, has a significant impact upon long-term emotional and physical health after cancer treatment, the number of young people who have sailed with us has increased. The Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust is a respected and knowledgeable organisation that works with every primary cancer treatment centre across the UK. We work closely with professionals and the cancer charities for children and young people, CLIC Sargent and the Teenage Cancer Trust, to ensure our values are aligned and to continue to ensure we hold the young person and their needs at the centre of all that we do. Our Trust is uniquely positioned to offer support over time and understands that the rebuilding of confidence after cancer can require more than one Trust trip. Over the past 15 years, over 2000 young people from across the UK have sailed with us and many of these young people have returned to sail.