My initiative is designed for and delivered in London
Yes
I am 18 years of age or above, by the application deadline.
Yes
My organisation is a registered UK entity and has a London-based address.
Yes
My organisation is a non-profit (e.g. school, university, or local authority) — not a for-profit, which can only join as a partner.
Yes
If there is a for-profit organisation as a partner in my initiative, they work on a cost-recovery basis only.
Yes
My solution is implemented at scale, or if not, I have a clear business plan, a minimum viable solution (prototype, pilot, or proof of concept), evidence of access to a lease for the space you are leveraging, and evidence of work or impact in London within your coalition.
Yes
I am aware that, if I am submitting more than one application to a Challenge run by Ashoka and Go! London, only one of them is able to progress through the stages.
Yes
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No
I have read and accepted the Challenge Terms & Conditions.
Yes
First Name
Kate
Last Name
Sedwell
Pronouns
She/Her
I would like to receive notifications and updates about Go London!, Ashoka, Ashoka Changemakers, and other Ashoka opportunities.
1
Are you an Ashoka Fellow?
No
Are you applying from an organization founded by an Ashoka Fellow?
No
If you are applying from an organization founded by an Ashoka Fellow, please specify the name and organisation of the fellow below.
Lead Organisation Name
Atlantic Pacific International Rescue Ltd
Year that you started/ registered your organisation
2016
Initiative Title
Unlocking the Dock, Reimagining Royal Docks for Youth Sport, Safety and Employment
My initiative is designed for and delivered in London
1
Website URL(s) or Social Media Handles
www.atlanticpacific.org.uk https://www.instagram.com/atlantic.pacific/
Initiative Stage
Growth (You’ve moved past the very first activities; working towards the next level of expansion.)
Sectors/Themes: What topic does your project most directly relate to?
Children & Youth
Initiative Summary: Describe your initiative in one sentence
Unlocking the Dock establishes a school and youth club-based inland open water lifeguarding competition: teams train, compete at Royal Docks, earn qualifications, and enter paid employment. The programme young people designed at our 'Making Newham Swimmable' hackathon is cyclical and self-sustaining: teams train in swimming and lifeguarding across the academic year, qualify, compete at Royal Docks each summer in a high stakes open water championship with a significant cash prize, and graduates enter paid employment at the dock and at local leisure facilities actively short of qualified lifeguards. Crucially: this is a sport. Lifeguarding is a competitive discipline and open water swimming is one of the UK's fastest-growing participation sports. We are creating a sporting culture at a waterfront where local young people have never competed - making the water aspirational and driving demand for swimming from the ground-up.
The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve and who will benefit the most from your solution? How close are you to the problem and/or community impacted?
In Newham, many young people leave school unable to swim. Although swimming is part of the national curriculum, stretched school budgets and high pool costs mean lessons are often unaffordable. For low-income families, swimming remains one of the least accessible sports. The consequences go beyond participation. Fourteen people drowned in UK open water in a single half-term week in 2026; eleven were under nineteen. Over one million young people are now NEET - the highest figure on record. These are the young people Atlantic Pacific works with every day. Through our Summer Splash programme, we regularly meet motivated young people who aspire to work in leisure and health but cannot progress to National Pool Lifeguard Qualification training because they do not meet minimum swim standards. Royal Docks sits on their doorstep, yet open water access requires confidence and competence many do not have. The infrastructure exists. The interest exists. The jobs exist. But structural barriers, affordability and lack of progression pathways prevent equitable access. Those who will benefit most are Newham's young people - particularly those aged 15 to 20 who are NEET or at risk of becoming so, and those from low-income households for whom swimming has never been financially or culturally accessible. Atlantic Pacific witnesses this first-hand: capable young people blocked by a preventable skills gap. Swimming is a life-saving skill, a gateway to physical activity, a sport, and a pathway to employment. Lifeguarding is a recognised competitive discipline. Open water swimming is one of the UK's fastest-growing participation sports. Royal Docks is a world-class venue for both - and it should belong to the young people who live beside it.
Your approach: How are you/ will you addressing the problem outlined above? How does your solution unlock or reimagine access to spaces for sport and physical activity? What role do landowners, local authorities, or other decision-making stakeholders play in your approach? We'd love to know about the origin of your idea, and what was your "aha" moment" that led you to take action?
Since 2019, Atlantic Pacific has delivered water safety and lifeguarding training beside Royal Docks. Our "aha" moment came during lifeguard recruitment: young people were eager to work in leisure and health but failed swim tests because lessons were unaffordable. The barrier was not motivation, it was structural. We originally responded to this problem on a smaller scale with our 'Local Lifesavers Programme' which worked with several groups and schools to train in first aid and lifesaving skills. This proposal expands that provision to a year-long programme across seven Newham partners - LDE UTC, Oasis Silvertown, Royal Docks Academy, Kingsford, Fight for Peace, West Silvertown Foundation and Newham Workspace - each bringing a team of 7-8 young people through a progressive qualification pathway: First Aid at Work, Psychological First Aid, NPLQ, and RYA Powerboat Level 2 for team captains. The programme brings whole school groups come to the dock for cold water awareness, throw-line rescue and CPR, reframing Royal Docks as a sporting and learning space. Partner schools then select their competition teams to take forward to the year programme. In Winter, participants complete qualifications and pool training. In Spring and Summer, they return to open water, complete NPLQ training, and compete in the Royal Docks Lifeguarding Championship, held each July within Summer Splash, giving the event an existing public audience and community infrastructure. This is where we start to see system change with a new culture of local young people being able to be in the dock - with a background in water safety and rescue and a job in lifeguarding. Royal Docks Waterways, the GLA, Newham Council and Love Open Water are key partners in governance, permissions and safety.
Collaboration with young people and the community: In what ways does your initiative engage young people and community members closest to the problem? What role do they play in building the solution you deliver?
Atlantic Pacific has worked in Royal Docks for seven years, building trusted relationships with local young people, schools and community organisations. Many young people who first engaged with us as participants are now qualified volunteers, sessional staff and lifeguards. Their lived experience directly informs how we design and adapt our programmes. Young people did not attend a consultation and go home. They designed the programme. At our Making Newham Swimmable hackathon, young people and NEET young adults from across Newham spent a full day on the question: why can't Newham swim? The school and club team structure was their idea. The annual dock competition was their idea. The cash prize was their idea. The employment pipeline into local leisure facilities was their idea. The Youth Advisory Board formalises this co-leadership: members are paid at London Living Wage, not volunteering, and have decision-making authority over competition format, prize structure, schools recruited and the employment pipeline. We are deliberately starting with local 16- to 20-year-olds. So many young people cannot swim and so when young adults from Newham are visibly employed as qualified lifeguards at Royal Docks, they change what is imaginable for every younger child who watches from the bank. The cultural shift runs downward from visible, paid, local expertise, and most importantly to the ability to swim, and ultimately the pleasure that swimming and open water swimming in the dock can bring our local young people. It enables us to Unlock the Dock for the younger local people to use confidently and safely. Young people are not passive recipients. They are co-designers, ambassadors and future custodians of Royal Docks.
Potential for/Evidence of Impact: How do you imagine your initiative will make a difference in unlocking spaces for and access to physical activity and sport so far? If you have already implemented it, what difference have you made so far? What is the impact your initiative has had , and or what impact do you envision having in the future?
This pilot will directly increase participation in sport and physical activity for young people currently excluded from Royal Docks and its qualification and employment pathways. In Year 1: up to 210 young people experience dockside water safety education; 56 progress into the intensive qualification pathway; at least 20 qualify as lifeguards and enter paid employment. In a single academic year, a young person who has never swum in open water can become a qualified, employed water safety professional. That depth of change, at that speed, is what makes this model unusual. Swimming and lifeguarding are sports. Many of these young people will never have experienced themselves as athletes. The Royal Docks Lifeguarding Championship changes that: a public event where local young people compete as qualified athletes, watched by schools, families and communities. In the medium term it becomes a community sporting fixture. In the long term it establishes an aquatic workforce pipeline and normalises open water as a safe, active community space. Royal Docks is a world-class venue most local young people have never entered as participants. This programme unlocks it physically, culturally and institutionally: creating safe community access, making it a place where young people train, compete and work, and demonstrating to the lido operator and GLA that community-led open water sport is viable and in demand. Once claimed this way, a space cannot easily be re-closed. Year 1: 56 participants, 7 partners, first championship. Year 3: regional qualifier as the blueprint spreads. Year 5: working with RLSS UK toward the first National Inland Open Water Lifeguarding Championship. Through the International Life Saving Federation, the model has potential to become an international format.
Innovation: What is different about your initiative compared to other solutions that are already out there? How is your approach original and innovative?
What makes this initiative genuinely innovative is not the activities it delivers but the system it builds: a self-sustaining, employer-funded, youth-governed competition model that turns a restricted waterfront into a community sporting asset. Within a four-square-mile radius there are approximately 1,500 young people in a single school year cohort. In Year 1 we engage one full year group from each partner at the dock for water safety education, then work intensively with 56 young people (7 to 8 per partner) through the full qualification pathway: pool sessions, First Aid at Work, Psychological First Aid, NPLQ training and the Royal Docks Lifeguarding Championship. Swimming and lifeguarding are sports. Many of these young people will never have experienced themselves as athletes. The championship changes that. In the short term, participants gain water confidence, safety knowledge, industry qualifications and paid employment. In the medium term, Royal Docks becomes embedded in the sporting life of local schools, with an annual competition that belongs to the community. In the long term, we establish a sustainable aquatic workforce pipeline and normalise open water as a safe, active, community space. The innovation also addresses a structural gap in the UK competition landscape. RLSS UK runs pool nationals. Surf Life Saving GB runs ocean and beach nationals. There is no national competition for inland open water, the environment where most drowning deaths occur. The Royal Docks Lifeguarding Championship is designed from the outset to become that national format, and eventually to seek endorsement from the International Life Saving Federation as a global competition category.
Viability and Scalability: How are you setting your initiative up for success, and what is your plan to ensure operational sustainability of your solution and its impact? What are your ideas for scaling your initiative to the next level?
Atlantic Pacific has operated in Royal Docks since 2019, maintaining active partnerships with Royal Docks Waterways, the GLA, Newham Council, University of East London and Love Open Water. These partners support site access, governance, safeguarding and alignment with the wider regeneration vision for the dock. Royal Docks Waterways are in a live tender process for a floating lido (2029 opening) and both leading candidates are supportive of this programme as a community proof of concept. Whichever operator wins will need a qualified local lifeguard workforce, a community access framework and a school’s programme with genuine co-design credentials. This programme provides all three. We will formalise a partnership with the successful tenderer in Months 10 to 12, embedding the programme in the lido operating model and securing Year 2 co-funding. The opening of Sea Lanes at Canary Wharf and other new open water venues across London fuels growing demand for qualified lifeguards that this programme directly addresses. Operational sustainability is built into the model. Employer co-funding activates in Year 2, with partner leisure facilities contributing in exchange for priority access to graduates. The annual championship generates revenue through commercial partnerships. We will scale through the blueprint. Year 1: 56 participants across 7 partner organisations, first championship. Year 2: employer co-funding live, London Youth Rowing engaged to bring up to 30 additional schools into the competition, transforming it from a Newham event into a London championship. Year 3: first replication site outside London. Year 5: 10 or more inland waterway communities nationally, with National Water Safety Forum endorsement and Swim England engagement.
Roles and Responsibilities: Describe how responsibilities are shared among your team or partners.
Atlantic Pacific International Rescue Ltd leads and is the accountable body, responsible for programme design, safeguarding, risk management, school coordination, dockside and pool session delivery, qualification progression, employment placement and monitoring and evaluation. Royal Docks Waterways enables safe dock activation through site permissions, operational planning and infrastructure coordination. They are actively supportive of this pilot as a community proof of concept aligned with their live lido tender and will integrate the programme into the dock's permanent community access framework. The Greater London Authority (Royal Docks team) provides strategic oversight and alignment with the wider regeneration vision, including the future lido development and long-term community access models. Newham Council supports borough-wide school engagement, facilitates access to local swimming pools during the winter qualification strand, and aligns the programme with youth services and safeguarding frameworks. University of East London and City St George’s, University of London contribute research insight, independent evaluation and student volunteer pathways to strengthen delivery capacity. Love Open Water provides technical expertise in open water supervision, safety systems and managed access protocols. West Silvertown Foundation supports participant recruitment and pastoral engagement, connecting the programme to the Silvertown and Custom House community. Youth Advisory Board co-designs the competition format, prize structure and recruitment strategy. Members are paid at London Living Wage and hold genuine decision-making authority, not an advisory role. Peer mentors and assistant instructors are programme graduates employed to support sessions and act as visible role models within their schools and communities. This governance model ensures shared accountability, operational safety and long-term community stewardship of Royal Docks.
Upcoming Milestones: Please provide an overview of the milestones that are required for your initiative to come to fruition/to grow.
Months 1 to 3: Foundation and Partnership Activation Formalise partnership agreements with LDE UTC, Oasis Silvertown, Royal Docks Academy, Kingsford, Fight for Peace, West Silvertown Foundation and Newham Workspace. Recruit 56 participants (8 per partner) through peer-led outreach. Establish Youth Advisory Board (8 members, London Living Wage). Complete risk assessments, safeguarding reviews and operational plans. Confirm pool access with Better Leisure and Love to Swim. Procure equipment and PPE. Set baseline metrics for swimming confidence, water safety knowledge and employment aspiration. Months 4 to 6 (Autumn Term): Qualifications, First Aid and Dock Familiarisation Bring full year groups from each partner school to Royal Docks for cold water awareness, throw-line rescue and CPR, reframing the dock as a sporting and learning space. Select 56 competition team members. Deliver Atlantic Pacific 3-Day First Aid at Work and Psychological First Aid to all 56 participants. Begin pool swimming sessions at Better Leisure and Love to Swim. Youth Advisory Board meets to co-design competition format and prize structure. Months 7 to 9 (Winter and Spring Terms): NPLQ Pathway and Pool Qualification Continue pool sessions. Deliver RLSS NPLQ training to all 56 participants and complete assessments (target: 45 completers). Identify 7 team captains for RYA Powerboat Level 2. Begin employer conversations for graduate placements. Confirm championship date and format with Royal Docks Waterways. Months 10 to 12 (Summer): Royal Docks Lifeguarding Championship and Employment Deliver supervised open water sessions at Royal Docks. Hold the first Royal Docks Lifeguarding Championship within Summer Splash (July or August): open water, team-based, public audience, cash prize. Place 20 or more graduates into paid lifeguarding roles at Royal Docks and partner leisure facilities. Begin outreach to London Youth Rowing for Year 2 expansion. Publish Open Water Community Blueprint v1. End of Year: Review and Year 2 Planning Full programme evaluation. Formal approach to incoming lido operator for Year 2 co-funding. Develop Year 2 grant applications to Sport England and the GLA. Youth Advisory Board review of competition format and Year 2 recruitment plan. Secure continuation funding and confirm Year 2 partner commitments.
Capacity-Building Participation and Support Funding: If you were to make it as a finalist, you will be required to participate in an 8-week capacity building programme. If funding/ cost is a barrier to your participation, we may be able to offer up to 10,000 GBP of grant money available to support you. Please break down below, if it is the case, what costs you would incur and you would need covered. (Please note that there are restrictions on how the grant money may be used; please refer to the T&Cs for further details.
Now that you've explored what it truly means to put young people at the centre, how are you designing your initiative so that young people are genuine co-leaders and co-creators of the initiative?
The Making Newham Swimmable hackathon was the moment we stopped designing for young people and started designing with them. We gave them an open question and a full day. They did not ask for more swimming lessons. They told us the dock should be theirs: as a sporting space, as a place to compete, as a source of employment. Every core element of this programme - the school and club team structure, the annual championship, the cash prize, the employment pipeline - came from that room. Co-leadership does not end with the hackathon. We are establishing a Youth Advisory Board with genuine governance authority. Members are drawn from hackathon participants and the first programme cohort. They set the competition format each year, vote on prize structure, and act as the public face of the programme with funders, media and stakeholders. They are paid at London Living Wage. Their role is not to be consulted. It is to lead. Peer recruitment is structural. Young people from the first cohort recruit the second. Atlantic Pacific provides the infrastructure; young people shape the culture. The age strategy is deliberate and rooted in systems thinking. Starting with 16- to 20-year-olds creates visible role models that shift cultural norms downward. When young adults are employed at the dock as qualified professionals, competing publicly and being celebrated, they change what younger children believe is possible for someone like them. Co-creation is not a design method for us. It is the systems change mechanism. The hackathon did not just produce a programme. It produced ownership. And ownership is what makes change last.
What partnerships and collaborations are most critical to delivering and sustaining your initiative and how are you building/ plan to build them?
Our most critical partnerships fall into three categories: those that give us access to the water, those that bring us the young people, and those that make the programme financially sustainable beyond Year 1. Royal Docks Waterways, the GLA, and the incoming lido operator control access to the dock and the land around it. Without them the programme cannot exist. We have moved these relationships from Level 3 toward Level 4 using the CoCreative engagement framework. Royal Docks Waterways are keen to support this pilot as proof of concept for their live lido tender. Our goal is Level 5 by Year 2, with the programme embedded in the lido's permanent operating framework and the incoming operator co-funding delivery in exchange for a qualified local lifeguard workforce. Schools and youth organisations (LDE UTC, Oasis Silvertown, Royal Docks Academy, Kingsford, Fight for Peace, West Silvertown Foundation and Newham Workspace) bring the young people and embed the programme in their timetables. We are building these relationships through named staff contacts at each organisation, joint planning sessions each term, and shared tracking of participant progression. Newham Workplace reaches young people furthest from opportunity through active referral, not passive signposting, and we are working with their NEET team to co-design the outreach and induction process, so it works for young people who have previously disengaged from formal provision. Love to Swim, Better Leisure and Love Open Water provide the pool and open water infrastructure for the qualification pathway. We are formalising these relationships through memoranda of understanding that confirm session access, pricing and safeguarding protocols before the programme launches, removing delivery risk from Year 1. Young people are at Level 5: co-create. The Youth Advisory Board co-determines competition format, prize structure and recruitment each year. They share the vision, not just the delivery. We build this by paying members at London Living Wage, treating their time as professional expertise, and ensuring their decisions are binding, not advisory. For long-term sustainability, UEL and City St George’s, University of London can be included in research and development. Corporate partners Tate and Lyle, ExCeL London and London City Airport are at Level 2 to 3 currently. We plan to move them toward co-investment in Year 2 by offering championship naming rights and graduate bursary schemes that give them visible community return on their investment in the dock's future.
What are you measuring, how are you measuring it, and what does the data tell you so far (quantitative and qualitative)?
We are measuring across three horizons, with distinct methods for each. Our approach is designed to both prove our outcomes to funders and improve our delivery over time. Direct outcomes (quantitative). Number of young people completing open water familiarisation / water safety training; number progressing to pool-based swimming; number achieving RLSS qualifications / first aid / PFA; number entering paid lifeguarding employment; number of schools and clubs with active registered teams; competition participation and completion rates. We also track the percentage of young people who report feeling welcome in the space, feeling safer than in previous settings, and showing evidence of influencing programme design or delivery. Cultural shift (mixed methods, annual). Participant surveys ask whether young people feel Royal Docks belongs to them, whether they have introduced a peer or family member to open water sport, and whether they see water safety as a realistic career. Our primary cultural indicator is peer-recruitment rate: what proportion of each new cohort was recruited by a programme graduate rather than by institutional outreach. Rising peer-recruitment signals that cultural momentum is self-generating rather than institutionally dependent. Systems change (qualitative, long horizon). Whether community open water access becomes a formal entitlement in the lido operating framework; whether Newham Council embeds swimming in its primary, secondary and /or NEET strategy; whether the blueprint is adopted at other waterway sites; whether institutions are changing behaviour without Atlantic Pacific driving it. What the data tells us so far is early but directionally strong. The hackathon showed demand is real: young people stayed all day, brought peers, and asked about qualifications and jobs. The problem is not motivation. It is infrastructure, access, and the institutional story that swimming is someone else's responsibility. That is the story we are changing.
Long-term impact: what lasting systems change are you seeking to create and how will you know when it has happened?
The Waves for Change model taught us something important: the shift from direct service to systems change happens when communities act without you. That is the standard we are holding ourselves to. We are seeking change at three levels, and we are clear that programme outputs alone are not the goal. They are evidence that deeper change is happening. Cultural change: the dock belongs to local young people. Using the 5R Framework, we are targeting a shift in Rules and Mindsets, not just Roles and Resources. We will know this has happened when young people from Newham are the visible, paid professionals at the water's edge. When children growing up beside Royal Docks see people who look like them working there, competing there, being celebrated there. The deepest marker is self-sustaining peer recruitment: when Atlantic Pacific is no longer needed to recruit, because young people are recruiting each other. Communities acting without you. Policy change: swimming as a public responsibility, not a parental one. We will know it has changed when Newham Council has a funded swimming pathway embedded in curriculum for both primary and secondary school-age young people, and when the GLA's clean waterways agenda includes community water safety employment as a funded commitment. Not an aspiration. Institutions changing behaviour without us driving it. Structural change: a replicable national model. The blueprint operating at ten or more inland waterway sites; RLSS UK endorsing the Royal Docks Championship format as the basis for a National Inland Open Water Lifesaving Championship; organisations beside rivers, reservoirs and lakes running their own version. That is when the change belongs to the system, not to Atlantic Pacific. New actors taking ownership. That is systems change.
Is there anything else you'd like to share with us that you were not able to share in previous questions?
Four things that did not fit elsewhere but matter for understanding what this programme is and why now is the right moment. The Royal Docks lido tender is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. Royal Docks Waterways are in a live tender process for a permanent lido operator. Both leading contenders are aware of and supportive of this programme. Whichever operator wins, this programme creates the community proof of concept they need: evidence that local young people want open water access, that safe structured provision is deliverable, and that a qualified local workforce exists. Without intervention, the lido risks becoming another premium leisure facility serving the regeneration economy rather than the community beside it. This programme embeds community access from day one rather than retrofitting it later. The competition is a category-creating moment. There is no national inland open water lifeguarding competition in the UK. RLSS has pool nationals. Surf Life Saving GB has ocean nationals. Inland open water, where most drowning deaths occur, has nothing. The Royal Docks Championship is designed to become that national format, growing through the blueprint network toward ILS international endorsement. We are building the community foundation that makes a national competition meaningful, not just spectacular. The reviewer feedback shared at the start of the capacity programme raised three specific challenges. We want to address each one directly. On system-level influence: this programme is not about opening access to Royal Docks. It is about changing who the dock belongs to, and changing the institutional story that swimming is a private responsibility rather than a public one. System-level influence means the lido operator embeds community access in their operating model because the proof of concept made it the only credible choice. It means Newham Council includes swimming proficiency in its primary, secondary and NEET strategy as a funded policy commitment. It means the blueprint is adopted at other inland waterway sites by organisations we have never met. And it means the Royal Docks Championship becomes the founding event of a national inland open water competition category that outlasts any single grant or organisation. Every design decision we have made is oriented toward that horizon. On geographic transferability across London: the feedback suggested the model is constrained by geography. We disagree. London Youth Rowing have shown that you can work across london, and indeed the UK. LYR currently work with over 30 state secondary schools across London and operate from multiple water sites across the city: Royal Docks, the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Surrey Quays and Richmond in west London. These sites provide geographically distributed open water access points covering east, north-east, south-east and west London. The qualification training strand uses local pools, which exist in every borough. The open water strand could propose to work with LYR network as its east London pilot in Year 2, while we build relationships with new open water venues and emerging lido sites across the rest of London for Years 3 and 4. The championship final is held at Royal Docks as the flagship venue. This is not a single-site model. It is a network model with Royal Docks as its hub and LYR's existing infrastructure as its spokes. On impact for the most underserved: the partner organisations in this programme are not chosen for convenience. Newham Workspace brings young people who are NEET and have disengaged from formal provision. Fight for Peace works with young people affected by violence and at risk of exclusion. West Silvertown Foundation reaches families in Custom House and Silvertown who have the least connection to leisure and sport. These are active delivery partnerships, not referral relationships. Every element of the programme is fully funded for participants: training, pool sessions, equipment, competition entry. There is no point at which participation depends on a family's ability to pay. The entry point is not competence but interest. Autumn dockside sessions are open to entire year groups. No young person needs to be able to swim to come to the dock. The programme builds competence. It does not select for it. Atlantic Pacific has been in Royal Docks since 2019. We did not arrive to run a project. We were already here. The hackathon was not a consultation. It was a community that trusted us enough to tell us what they actually need. That trust cannot be manufactured or imported. It can only be earned, year by year, beside the water.
