This year marks the eighth year for the global event and organizers have set their sights on a new goal – reaching more than one billion with their message Swimming Lessons Save Lives™ by 2019.
This year marks the eighth year for the global event and organizers have set their sights on a new goal – reaching more than one billion with their message Swimming Lessons Save Lives™ by 2019.
Local World’s Largest Swim Lesson events occur at hundreds of locations in more than 20 different countries on five continents over the course of 24 hours. What’s the purpose of the event? To provide kids and parents exposure to life-saving water safety skills and build awareness about the vital importance of teaching children to swim to help prevent drowning. Organizers work to connect the dots between the real risk of childhood drowning and the need for basic water competency skills and crucial parental supervision to keep kids safe in and around the water.
This year, organizers at Watersafe Swim School in Los Al brought the global event to town on June 22.
Watersafe has its roots founded on the principles of providing the highest quality swim lessons providing people of all ages the skills they need to self rescue in the event of an accidental fall in water.
Drowning continues to remain the leading cause of unintended, injury related death for children ages 1-4, and second leading cause for children under 14. There are numerous reasons this statistic still exists today. Many parents are not educated on how to recognize a drowning situation, and the important that supervision is a critical component to being safe around water. Less than half of parents indicate that they remain within arms’ reach of their child in the water. Many of these deaths could have been avoided through better supervision, pool gates, and swimming safety equipment.
But what is the main culprit in accidental drownings? Many lack basic swimming skills. A 2014 American Red Cross survey found than 54 percent of all Americans either can’t swim or don’t have all of the basic swimming skills. It only takes seconds for an accidental fall in to occur, and just a few minutes for injuries or even drowning to occur. For every accidental drowning, there are 6 more cases where someone suffers permanent damage, typically brain damage due to a lack of oxygen to the brain.
This was the second year that Watersafe has participated in the World’s Largest Swim Lesson at the Aquatic Center located in Los Alamitos. Dozens of families came out to participate and it featured an amazing free breakfast from Hof’s Hut Bakery, and delicious coffee provided by Javatinis. Several local businesses participated as cash sponsors helping raise over $400.
If even one life can be saved with spreading this message, there isn’t a dollar amount we could possibly place on that. Everyone is encouraged to support STOP DROWNING NOW, a year round water safety advocacy charity by going to stopdrowningnow.org and donating.
This article appeared in the July 5, 2017 print edition of the News Enterprise.
