Driven by CLIA, MSC Cruises and the Port Authority of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, this project brings the cruise industry closer to hundreds of children and finds in Tenerife the starting point for its evolution into the first international educational competition of its kind in the sector.

Some children dream of becoming football players.
Others want to be doctors, teachers or singers.

Very few dream of working on a cruise ship.
Not because they do not want to,
but because they do not even know that world exists.

“¡Todos a bordo!” was born right there: in that gap between what a child can imagine and the real opportunities that are within reach.

It is an educational project driven by CLIA, MSC Cruises and the Port Authority of Santa Cruz de Tenerife with a clear and ambitious goal: to bring the cruise industry closer to those who can benefit the most from getting to know it.

Everything started with a sentence from Ana at CLIA.
She did not talk about a strategic plan.
She talked about something much more simple and human:

“I have a dream: I want ‘¡Todos a bordo!’ to reach as many children as possible.”

Behind that sentence there was more than a wish.
There was a reality that, as an industry, had been overlooked for too long.

There is a world full of professional and personal opportunities that is not reaching those who need it most.

That was the moment when something shifted.
Ana gave voice to the dream.
And together with Sofía Basterra from MSC Cruises and the Port Authority of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, we began working to make it real.

It was not enough to explain what the sector is.
We needed to open it up.
Make it visible.
Allow children not just to hear about this world, but to experience it.
And we did it in the best possible way for a child to truly understand: by learning through play.

This is how “¡Todos a bordo!” began to evolve, with Tenerife as the starting point of that transformation.

When the classroom becomes a ship

The project begins far from the sea, in the place where children spend most of their time: the classroom.

In the first edition held in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, more than 250 fourth-grade pupils took part in dynamic role-play workshops.

One day, the classroom stops being a classroom and becomes a ship.
Desks turn into the bridge, the galley, the infirmary, the open deck or the entertainment area.
Students are divided into teams and each group assumes a role: captain, bridge, kitchen, medical team, entertainment, operations or environmental management.

They are not memorising facts.
They are making decisions.

They need to explain themselves, coordinate, understand what each role does and how it fits within the whole system. Very quickly, they realise that if one role fails, everything is affected.

That is where real learning begins.

It is not only about understanding jobs.
It is about understanding that a cruise ship operates because people work together, because responsibility is shared, because communication is essential and because trust is what keeps everything moving.

Learning values by living them

As the game progresses, something happens that does not fit into any textbook.

Children begin working with values that are often only seen written on posters or in institutional documents: respect for other cultures, the importance of languages, teamwork and environmental responsibility.

None of this is explained to them in theory.
They live it.

That is why it is not theory.
It is experience.
And experience is what truly stays with them.

From the classroom to the collage

After “living” the ship from the classroom, a key moment arrives: to pause, look back and make sense of everything they have experienced.

Each class works together to create a collage using recycled materials that represents what they have learned. The goal is not to produce the most beautiful picture, but to reflect on which professions they choose to portray, which values they want to highlight and which moment of life on board impacted them the most.

They discuss, decide and reinterpret.
And in that process, learning moves to another level: it stops coming from the outside and becomes something of their own.

The day the ship stops being just a drawing

For class 4B of Colegio Virgen del Mar, winners of the programme, the prize was not a medal or a certificate. It was a day on board MSC Virtuosa.

They walked up the gangway and, suddenly, everything they had imagined in the classroom was right there in front of them.

Corridors, decks, restaurants, uniforms.
Spaces that had once been simple drawings in a collage became real.
Jobs that had once been words on a worksheet turned into faces, voices and stories.

The system finally became visible.

But the most important part was not the ship itself.
It was the people.

Crew members from different countries, with different accents and personal stories, shared their daily life on board with children who listened with a mix of curiosity and amazement.

Through those exchanges, the children understood something essential: the world is much bigger than they imagined and, at the same time, much closer than they thought.

 

And those who did not go on board

Most of the students did not step on board MSC Virtuosa.
And yet, all of them took something important with them.

Now they know that this world exists.
That behind a cruise ship there are people, professions and stories.
That there are paths they may never have considered before, options and opportunities that until then had not even been part of their mental map.

That changes the way they look at their future.

The goal was never for every child to want to work on a cruise ship.
The goal was to ensure that no child would stop considering it simply because they had never been exposed to it.

From Tenerife to the world

Tenerife became the place where “¡Todos a bordo!” took a decisive step forward.

There, the programme became, for the first time, an international educational competition linked to the cruise industry.

Not as an isolated initiative, but as a model capable of growing, being replicated and connecting with other ports, other schools and many more children.

Because real change does not happen when a child simply visits a ship.
It happens when that child understands that they can also be part of it.

When a cruise ship stops being just a point on the horizon
and begins to become a possible destination for their own future.

 

 

 

That moment marked the beginning of a new stage.
And the journey is only just beginning.

By Luz Marina Espiau