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Unity Partners have a mission that aligns with the mission of United We Row. We benefit from the resources, programs, and opportunities they offer – and we hope you do, too. Please learn about our partners and take advantage of their benefits alongside your fellow rowing community members.
Who They Are:
A Long Talk About The Uncomfortable Truth is an anti-racism activation experience for leadership, organizations, teams, coaches, and communities. Their stated goal is to put an anti-racist at every dinner table in America. When it comes to athletes, they are giving motivated people who believe in equality and eliminating oppression the tools, language, and power they need to be change-makers on every sports team they can.
Kyle Williams and Kamal Carter, founders of A Long Talk, have worked closely with USRowing’s staff and rowing programs at the University of Washington, Yale, Penn, San Diego Crew Classic, Three Rivers Rowing, and more.
Website: https://alongtalk.com/
Why They Believe There is “A Seat in the Boat for Everyone”:
Kyle and Kamal believe there is a seat in the boat for everyone because they believe we're better together. Any boat with diversity in thought, action and deed, wins both off and on the water.
Far too long rowing has reflected the status quo. Through conversation, action, and progress over perfection, we can change that paradigm and usher in a new era where there is a Seat in the Boat for Everyone.
What the Rowing Community Should Know:
Rowing organizations can begin the "long talk” any month of the year with existing events or work with the founders of the organization to create their own program for their community. The program begins with two, two-hour sessions, usually held within a week of each other. The experience is orchestrated as a series of reflective conversations where participants are asked to listen, view, and respond in real time. The conversations take place in large and small group settings using the breakout rooms.
Register for a monthly event here.
Who They Are:
The Center for Healing and Justice through Sport (CHJS) team includes practitioners, program experts, and trainers, all of whom are leaders in the field of healing through sport. Their goal is to ensure that more young people and athletes have access to sport experiences that are healing-centered, inclusive, and for many organizations, work to address issues of systemic injustice.
By integrating healing-centered sport more deeply into the sports world at-large, they help heal trauma, effect lasting change in the world, and create a foundation for broader social justice. They are committed to staying rooted in the innovation that exists in community-based, sports-based youth development (SBYD) and elevating grassroot efforts to make sports equitable and healing-centered.
Website: www.chjs.org
Why They Believe There is “A Seat in the Boat for Everyone”:
From Megan Bartlett, Founder of CHJS. "I believe the people who most need, and can benefit from, the healing power of sport are the ones who are least likely to have access. That's why initiatives like United We Row are vitally important to help close the accessibility gap.
What the Rowing Community Should Know:
CHJS wants to work with rowing organizations to help support coaches, athletes, and the rowing community. Subscribe via this link to CHJS ongoing communications to receive the latest coach resources, access free trainings, and hear opportunities to help build the healing-centered sport movement.
Who They Are:
Concept2 is a manufacturer of sport-specific fitness equipment. Rowing is our reason for being. Our primary goal is to promote and encourage the growth of rowing, both indoors and outdoors. We believe that rowing is a lifelong activity, accessible to all. Every machine and oar we produce comes from a background of over forty-five years of excellence. We strive to design, manufacture, sell and service unique products of the highest quality and value for the benefit of the Concept2 community—our customers, employees, suppliers and neighbors.
Why They Believe There is “A Seat in the Boat for Everyone”:
At Concept2, we believe in the transformative power of sport and the keen sense of community that surrounds it, and we aim to support efforts to build that community.
What the Rowing Community Should Know:
Who They Are:
Doc Wayne is a non-profit founded to provide access to brighter futures for youth around the world and to strengthen the field of mental health by using revolutionary sport-based therapy and clinical initiatives. Their vision is to level the playing field of mental health globally by harnessing the power of sport-based therapy.
Website: www.docwayne.org
Why They Believe There is “A Seat in the Boat for Everyone”:
At Doc Wayne, they are committed to creating brighter futures for youth around the globe through the power of sport. Sport is a powerful catalyst to empower youth, and they welcome the opportunity to reach athletes, coaches, and more in the rowing community. To have “a seat in the boat” through collaboration and partnership with USRowing and United We Row means Doc Wayne is part of a greater team, they can share their expertise in sport-based mental health, and they can increase access across the country.
What the Rowing Community Should Know:
Doc Wayne is an award-winning non-profit leading the field of sport-based therapy and catalyzing a mental health movement. They provide training, tools, and services that address emotional, behavioral, traumatic, racial, gender, and cultural-based barriers by providing equitable access to better mental health for all. Their clinician-led curricula put sport into practice, strengthening social-emotional skills in young learners to build healthier, more resilient global communities. The Champions Network® is Doc Wayne's external training program. They partner with various organizations, clinicians, sports coaches, and other youth development professionals and explain how to include trauma-informed, sport-based, mental health support in their work with young people.
Engage with the Doc Wayne training in The Launch and contact Doc Wayne to collaborate directly with your rowing organization.
Who They Are:
Take the cost and burden out of the equation by using Hello Insight (HI), an online evaluation and learning platform, to better understand, enhance, and share your impact as a nurturing environment for social and emotional learning (SEL) – a key predictor of academic success, career readiness, well-being, and long-term thriving (CASEL, 2024). HI provides research-based, nationally tested surveys that evaluate young people’s SEL development and the positive youth development experiences that promote it.
Join not only other rowing organizations but also sports-based youth development organizations (SBYD) across the country to support every student-athlete in your program and to prove the results of your programs to caregivers, coaches, and donors.
Why They Believe There is “A Seat in the Boat for Everyone”:
Fundamentally, Hello Insight aligns with the United We Row focus on growing programs, coaches, and young people by leveraging direct feedback from student-athletes to bridge divides, unite across differences, and push the sports-based youth development (SBYD) field forward.
Hello Insight believes that strong organizations can empower their staff to do employ stronger, research-based positive youth development practices with young people. Their theory of change emphasizes the importance of organizations and their staff as key to youth outcomes. An important part of organizational learning and improvement is having the data from which to guide decisions. Hello Insight was created to provide greater access to research, ongoing learning, rigorous evaluation, and technology -- it's fundamental to our origin story on data equity. HI "democratizes data" for all sizes of youth-serving organizations, and they seek to "close the evaluation gap" -- see this article in SSIR.
What the Rowing Community Should Know:
Hello Insight is a cost-effective investment to learn across one or all of your programs and sites. As a Unity Partner, HI is offering our rowing community 50% off of the base annual subscription fee for your first year ($2000; for Association members $1000). Begin learning for as little as $1500 for 50 youth surveys. See the pricing sheet here, and to learn more, schedule here. By leveraging this Unity Partnership offer, you’re agreeing to share your HI reports with the Association so we can promote our collective impact.
Who They Are:
PCA is a national nonprofit organization working to unlock the life changing power of sports for all kids regardless of social or economic circumstance. PCA works with our partners to help them provide a positive, equitable, and accessible youth sports experience for all kids. PCA workshops combine the latest in sports, educational psychology and organizational behavior with practical advice from a National Advisory Board of top pro and college athletes and coaches who use our principles at the highest levels of competition.
Website: https://positivecoach.org/
Why They Believe There is “A Seat in the Boat for Everyone”:
PCA’s Sports Equity Initiative seeks to unlock the transformative power of sports by working to address and eliminate the barriers to participation experienced by kids in low-income communities across the country, so that EVERY child, has access to a positive youth sports experience. When PCA says equity in youth sports, we’re talking about equal access AND equal outcomes for kids living in low-income communities. Our goal is to see equal outcomes in measures such as (but not limited to):
What the Rowing Community Should Know:
Encouraging athletes with positive reinforcement helps them hear and heed the necessary corrections. With that winning combination of truthful, specific praise and constructive criticism, athletic performance improves and so do the chances that kids stick with sports longer and learn all the valuable life lessons inherently available through organized competition. Academic research and real-world scoreboard results from millions of coaches, parents and athletes that PCA has trained and educated prove what the pro and college coaches on PCA’s National Advisory Board already know: Positive is powerful.
Who They Are:
RISE is a national nonprofit that educates and empowers the sports community to eliminate racial discrimination, champion social justice and improve race relations. Through partnerships and programs, RISE inspires leaders in sports to create positive change on matters of race and equality.
Website and Social Media: https://risetowin.org/; @RISEtoWin
Why They Believe There is “A Seat in the Boat for Everyone”:
In RISE's work to eliminate racism and champion social justice, we all have a role to play, and everyone can be a leader in championing social justice. In rowing, the sport is strongest when we include and welcome athletes, coaches and supporters of all identities and make intentional efforts to include new faces and voices in our sport. With that spirit, there must be a seat in the boat for everyone and we must all work together to continue to grow the rowing community to be inclusive, accessible and welcoming to all.
What the Rowing Community Should Know:
RISE is honored to be a Unity Partner of USRowing and looks forward to our partnership as a part of the 2024 United We Row program. RISE's curriculum covers topics such as identity, bias, diversity concepts, and athlete activism and teaches skills such as perspective-taking, empathy, critical thinking, and leadership. RISE programs build skills and create safe spaces to have important and often difficult conversations about race, perceptions and stereotypes that must take place for a community to grow. We empower participants of all ages to be leaders for racial equity, social justice, diversity and inclusion. Contact RISE to schedule a training for your rowing program or visit the website to learn more.
Who They Are:
Rowing Cares creates opportunities for cancer survivors across the U.S. and internationally to experience the physical, mental and emotional benefits offered through rowing, both on the water and on the erg.
Website: https://www.rowingcares.org/
Why They Believe There is “A Seat in the Boat for Everyone”:
Survivor Rowing Network, a network of leaders across the US, believes every cancer survivor should have a seat in a boat or on an erg. They are building an inclusive community with women and men who are on their cancer recovery journey together. Some are still in treatment.
It's about hope, mentorship, and leadership. It's about introducing a new sport to people coming out of the fight of their lives, often lonely and alone—giving them a community and a reason to re-enter the world, gaining confidence every day. It's about education and sharing the importance that exercise plays in preventing recurrence—ultimately helping to ease survivors' minds who wonder what happens next.
What the Rowing Community Should Know:
Launched in 2023, Survivor Rowing Network is a network of rowers, coaches, mentors, and supporters committed to introducing more cancer survivors to rowing. They connect established survivor rowing programs with others seeking to start a program or strengthen and grow a young program. They open doors to individuals not associated with a rowing program looking to join our community which includes more than 20 survivor rowing programs nationwide.
Many people in Survivor Rowing programs had never rowed before their cancer diagnosis and were referred to rowing by their doctor or cancer center. Others rowed before their treatment and were looking for a safe community to continue after. All experience health benefits, and research shows that exercise is one of the greatest deterrents to recurrence.
Survivor Rowing Network also allows some cancer survivors to race in a "Survivors Only" boat. In 2023, they entered a Masters 8+ and Masters 4+ boat in Head of the Charles as part of the Survivor Rowing Network Launch.
Get started with the Survivor Rowing Network to learn more about resources, opportunities, or to launch your own Survivor Rowing Program. For more information, please contact Russ Kohl: Russkohl@rowingcares.org
Who They Are:
Up2Us Sports is a leader in engaging and training sports-based youth development coaches, practitioners, and organizations to address the most pressing issues facing youth in under-resourced urban communities. Up2Us Coach, our flagship program, is an AmeriCorps-funded national service program that funds coach-mentors that work directly with youth. Our AmeriCorps Coaches are placed at partner organizations to increase impact and expand programming to reach more youth.
Up2Us Sports specializes in training coaches to use sports to transform the lives of youth on and off the field. We offer all Up2Us Sports coaches and partner organizations over 25 hours of sports-based youth development training that emphasize the skills needed to help youth reach their full potential.
Website: https://www.up2us.org/
Why They Believe There is “A Seat in the Boat for Everyone”:
Up2Us believes that all sports matter and that they are inherent healing mechanisms that can truly transform lives and communities. Up2Us also recognizes that not all sporting opportunities are equitable. Up2Us Sports believes that when you offer youth and communities new and exciting opportunities to connect, play, and compete, good things happen for everyone. They are proud to be working alongside USRowing to create more coaching opportunities to grow the capacity of local programs and give more kids a chance to participate in the exciting sport of rowing.
What the Rowing Community Should Know:
Up2Us Sports is here to serve you. They know their sports-based youth development training and AmeriCorps coaching opportunities have helped thousands of coaches more deeply serve youth and their capacity-building programs have allowed hundreds of organizations across the nation to achieve their missions and allow more youth to participate in their programs.
To learn more and partner with Up2Us, please visit the website.
Who They Are:
#WeRideTogether serves as USRowing’s Official Safeguarding Partner. #WeRideTogether is a nonprofit organization created to cast light upon the endemic issue of sexual abuse in youth and amateur sports. With the mission to make the youth and amateur sports environment safer for all athletes, #WeRideTogether provides evidence-based, educational, ethical, compassionate, inclusive, and advocatory services to all members of athletic communities. #WeRideTogether is committed to creating the radical change needed to fulfill that vision through education and awareness, creating a safe place for survivors to find resources and share their voices, and eliminating the stigma around these necessary conversations.
Why They Believe There is a "Seat in the Boat for Everyone":
#WeRideTogether believes rowing should be the safest and healthiest place for children and young adults to grow and flourish, and that every individual has the right to learn, train, and compete without fear of abuse. #WeRideTogether advocates strongly for creating inclusive sporting environments that are welcoming and beneficial to all members. #WeRideTogether supports everyone’s participation in rowing and honors that we all play a role in fostering positive environments in the boathouse and on the water.
What Should the Rowing Community Know:
#WeRideTogether supports all individuals and communities in rowing, including coaches, parents, and athletes. #WeRideTogether focuses on creating resources that are survivor- and trauma-informed, as well as serving as a bridge to already existing, valuable resources.
Prevention and awareness are our greatest assets in protecting and empowering coaches and athletes. If you or someone you know needs help, please visit our crisis resources or call the Courage First Athlete Helpline at 888-279-1026. For more information, email us at info@weridetogether.today, find us on Instagram at weridetogether.today, and look for us on the USRowing Safeguarding page.
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