Who are we?
CLSARC has been operating on the river wear at Chester-le-Street since 1888, we are a club open to all ages and pride ourselves on remaining an affordable access route to the sport of rowing.
The club is ran entirely by it's excellent volunteers who kindly give up hundreds of hours a year to support our junior and senior rowing members
The club has had a large amount of success at local, national and international events and we had the pleasure of supporting our first Olympic medalist at Paris 2024 with Lauren Irwin winning a bronze medal in the women's 8s.
We have also had international honours in our junior ranks this year with Harvey Burford representing GB at the world championships, Suzie Youlton racing for Wales at the home international regatta and Zack Hills competing for England in the home international beach sprint regatta.
Why are we crowdfunding?
We are making a crowdfunding push to support the purchase of two new double sculls for the club, the team have worked tirelessly over the past 12 months and we are in the final round of fundraising to achieve our goals of bringing these two high end boats into the club before the end of 2024, with the bulk of the fundraising done we are looking to secure £1500 to get both boats placed into manufacture and shipped to the UK before the end of the year.
How we’ll spend the money raised
All money raised will be spent directly on the incoming boats to support our growth of membership over the past 12 months, and help our aspiring athletes continue to thrive on the national and international stages.
By bringing in these boats it also allows us to use our current fleet to support more of our regional and development athletes on their own paths through the rowing world.
Community impact
The club currently supports members from year 6 (11 years old) through to members in their 70's whilst doing our best to make an environment suitable for all who may want to row or join us for some coffee and cake on a weekend morning.
Following the Paris Olympics we have had a wonderful amount of growth at the club seeing our numbers grow to over 150 regular users of the boathouse, within this growth we have had the pleasure of teaching over 30 adults in our learn to row courses and each of them have been a great addition to the team.
Alongside athlete development the club also prides itself on the support it gives to it's coaches or helpers, seeing the coaching team double in size over the last 12 months has allowed us to support multiple charitable organizations with rowing taster courses.
How you can play your part
There are four simple ways to help us reach our target, and make this project a reality.
1. Make a pledge. Don’t delay if you’re going to support us because momentum is key to our success!
2. Spread the word. Share our project on your social media pages and tell the world to get behind us! The more people we reach, the more support we will get.
3. Offer rewards. Get involved if you are a local business by donating things we can offer to our supporters. We will give you a shout out!
4. Fundraise for us. If you want to run your own fundraiser – maybe a sponsored activity or similar – use the 'contact project' button at the top of our page to let us know. Setting up your own page only takes a few minutes and you won’t need any bank details. Just a fun idea!