In December 2024, Paul & Joshua Hawkins are rowing 3,000 miles across the Atlantic to raise money in aid of the Twinning Project. Sport has always been a major part of my life - from playing, coaching and umpiring.  Whilst I wasn’t good enough to make a career out of playing, by founding Hawk-Eye and growing the business, all of my professional life has been involved with sport, and I can appreciate its value from many perspectives.  Hawk-Eye is now used in 27 sports, and my contribution to sport was recognised through being awarded an OBE in 2014.

All of my core values, beliefs and skills were learnt through sport.  From the time management of only being allowed to go to junior England table tennis training if my home work was done, to the mental side of trying to become a professional cricketer and how much confidence played a role, to the physical side of being part of a successful rowing squad and the tight knit team ethics that environment demands. Running the University Boat Club was like running my 1st business. Hawk-Eye was run like a sports team, taking on competition and rising to the challenge.

I want my kids to learn the same life lessons through sport as I learnt. That is why our team name for the Atlantic Challenge is Scholarship. One of the greatest life lessons is resilience, as everyone's journey through life has their ups and downs.  How one responds to the challenges is fundamental to achieving a positive outcome.  This challenge will test and expand our levels of resilience beyond anything we have ever done before, and if we are successful we will learn about ourselves and grow as people.  The story of our adventure can be followed @Scholarship_row on instagram.

Many of the people the Twinning Project aims to support have not had the opportunity to learn these values through sport.  However, many have life experiences which will have significantly built up their levels of resilience.  The Twinning Project uses sport as a vehicle to recognise this resilience as an unique asset, and gives them a platform to fulfil their potential in sport which they can then replicate in all forms of life. The Twinning Project helps good people who have chosen the wrong path at some point in their lives.  All of them will be coming back into society within the following 12-18 months. It is our collective responsibility and within everyone's interests to give all participants the best possible chance of choosing the right path in the future.  The Twinning Project already has an amazing track record for achieving this, and adding the "Freshmen" rowing arm to the initiative gives inmates a great range of options which might capture their imagination.

The row will start from La Gomera on the 12th December this year. We will hopefully arrive in Antigua towards the end of January 2025