Wild and Water Swimming
Project Street Address
Project City
Project Province/State
Project Postal/Zip Code
Project Country
Field of Work
health/sports
If Field of Work is “other” please define in 1-2 words below
Year project started (or projected start date) (yyyy)
2006
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Project URL (or link to any media coverage)
What is the primary problem your venture is trying to address and how are you addressing it (or planning to address it)?
The primary problem that Wild and Water Swimming addresses is the lack of swimming and water safety skills among low-income children, particularly African-American children. According to the Center for Disease Control and USA Swimming, African-American children between the ages of 5 and 14 drown at a rate 2.6 times higher than their Caucasian counterparts, and six out of ten African-American children cannot swim. Wild and Water Swimming combats the problem of drowning and its disproportionate effects on African-American children by providing free swim lessons for low-income children in the metropolitan Atlanta and New Orleans areas. These swim lessons are given by trained youth competitive swimmers who serve as volunteer swim instructors. These instructors serve as role models to the students, and according to USA Swimming, children who have a role model who is a swimmer are twice as likely to successfully learn to swim.
Name Your Project
Wild and Water Swimming
Describe Your Idea
Project Description
Wild and Water Swimming is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing free swim lessons for children who would otherwise not be able to afford lessons.
Unique and different
Wild and Water Swimming is unique from other learn-to-swim programs in several ways. First, Wild and Water Swimming recruits and trains competitive swimmers to teach its lessons. This is, in addition to providing an important service for the low-income children population, tapping a resource of volunteers not typically asked to serve. Our swim lessons are scheduled right after swim team practices so that it is convenient for swimmers to stay and teach. This also provides benefits for the children that other learn-to-swim programs cannot offer. The kids interact on a regular basis with teenaged role models and many become inspired to become competitive swimmers as well. Wild and Water has made arrangements for any WW Swim Lesson graduate to swim on a competitive swim team free of charge. Wild and Water Swimming is also unique in that we strive to look beyond the swim lessons and teach life skills as well as aquatic skills. This is exhibited through our Citizenship Awards program and our goals of starting an All Star as well as lifeguarding program for our students. The Citizenship Awards Program rewards the best behaved swim lesson group each semester with a fabulous prize. The All Star Program will encourage academic and athletic achievement by rewarding students who earn straight A's and learn certain swimming skills with an "All Star" towel. The lifeguarding program will provide older Wild and Water Swimming graduates with job skills that tie in with their swimming skills, allowing them to earn money and provide a needed service to the community.
Project plan
In the next six months, Wild and Water hopes to successfully expand to New Orleans, LA. Currently, we are in the process of opening two locations in the New Orleans area: Tulane University and The University of New Orleans. Our Tulane University program will recruit from local community organizations and our UNO location will recruit from the UNO Charter School System. We are particularly excited about partnering with the schools, as Wild and Water Swimming’s goal for New Orleans is to make swimming lessons a part of the physical education programs at each elementary school in the city. We will also be expanding to another location in Atlanta, GA: Emory University. This will bring the total of year-round swim lesson programs to 7 and bring the total number of children served from 150 to hopefully 340. In addition, Wild and Water Swimming will continue implementing the Citizenship Awards Program, begin an "All Star" program to encourage athletic and academic achievement, and begin a lifeguarding classes program for older swimming lesson graduates.
Partnerships
Wild and Water Swimming has partnered with a variety of nonprofit organizations as well as swim clubs. In order for Wild and Water to work, we depend upon our partnerships with local nonprofits that serve low-income and needy families. After locating a nonprofit organization, Wild and Water negotiates partnerships in which the nonprofit organization, already serving low-income kids, locates the children and provides transportation to our swim lessons. In exchange, the swim lessons are free of charge, swim suits, goggles, swim caps, and towels are provided, and the nonprofit can advertise Wild and Water Swimming lessons as a service provided through their program. Examples of nonprofits we have partnered with are Wilderness Works, Hampton Oaks Learning Link, Rainbow Village, Big Brothers Big Sisters Forsyth County, My Sister's House, and Creative Community Services. Wild and Water has also partnered with two school systems: The Forsyth County School System in Forsyth County, GA and the University of New Orleans Charter School Network in New Orleans, LA. Wild and Water has also made a number of successful partnerships with swim clubs and teams. These partnerships are pioneered through our dedicate volunteer swim instructors. The clubs and teams we work with include Dekalb Aquatics, Dynamo Swim Club, Swim Atlanta, Emory Swimming, and the University of New Orleans swim team.
Impact
Wild and Water strives to help low-income children grow through the sport of swimming, teaching them to swim as well as helping them grow in strength and character.
Effectiveness
Wild and Water has served 150 children in the Atlanta area and recruited 60 swim lesson instructors and other volunteers. The children benefit from our program not only by learning the life saving skill of swimming, but by also by meeting young role models and having the opportunity to swim competitively.
How do you engage and impact the community?
Wild and Water Swimming has provided over 150 Atlanta area economically disadvantaged children with the life saving skill of swimming and has provided the swimming community with a rewarding, hands-on volunteer opportunity not offered by other learn-to-swim programs. Wild and Water has also made a world of a difference in the lives of its students and their families in ways not related to the pool. The best example of this is found in our Hampton Oaks program. As the Hampton Oaks children began swimming lessons, and parents and children alike learned more about Wild and Water and our plans to serve in hurricane-ravaged places like New Orleans, LA, they became inspired. Our students would make donations to Wild and Water Swimming themselves, and parents would insist on buying a swimsuit for their child rather than taking one of ours, because they knew that the swimsuit would instead go to a child from a family in an even more difficult situation than their own. The generosity was amazing; the Residents Services Director even reported to me that parents who were addicted to drugs were asking him to hold their money for them, so that they instead could buy a swimsuit for their child. That is what makes me most proud of Wild and Water Swimming. We are not just providing a service for low-income children, we are combating apathy and inspiring generosity and compassion among people who are too often made to feel that they can give nothing.
How do you measure this impact?
Wild and Water Swimming measures its impact in several ways. The first measure of success that we use is the number of children to which we've been able to provide at least one swimming lesson. By this measure, Wild and Water has been very successful, serving 176 low-income children in the Atlanta area. We also measure our success by the number of children who have passed our basic swimming skills test, which requires the child to float, do the crawl, and answer questions on basic pool safety. This is the measure we most commonly use to calculate our success, and by this standard, Wild and Water swimming has also been very successful. One hundred and fifty children out of the 176 who have been to at least one swim lesson have passed the test, indicating that 85% of our students leave the Wild and Water swimming program knowing how to swim and be safe around water. Eighty Five percent is an excellent number, and allows us to see that we are very successful in achieving our goal of teaching our children swimming and water safety. Wild and Water Swimming also measures its impact by the number of volunteers we are able to recruit and how many times each volunteer teaches swimming lessons. Wild and Water Swimming has 60 regular volunteers, keeping our student-instructor ratio 3 to 1 and allowing us to provide very close attention to each child. We consider regular volunteers to be volunteers who miss no more than one swimming lesson a month.
Obstacles
The two biggest obstacles for Wild and Water are transportation and networking in the city of New Orleans. With transportation costs rising, it is becoming harder for our nonprofit partners to bring our students to the swim lessons. Hurricane Katrina destroyed many of New Orleans's indoor swimming pools, and this will prove difficult as we work to expand beyond our Tulane University and The University of New Orleans locations.
This Entry is about (Issues)
(or how do you expect your initiative will be financed)
Wild and Water is financed largely through in-kind donations and through grants. Much of the resources we need, such as pool time and some swim caps, goggles, swimsuits, and towels are provided by the swim clubs or donated by corporations like Finis and by individuals. Our expenses, such as gas money, food for the kids, and additional swimming equipment, are covered by grants, although we will need money for our New Orleans program to pay for the pool time.
Aside from financial sustainability, how do you plan to grow and sustain your project?
Wild and Water Swimming has big plans for the future. One goal is to expand the program throughout the Southeastern United States. Wild and Water is currently operating in Atlanta, GA, and plans to be operating in New Orleans, LA by January 1st, 2009. Later in 2009, Wild and Water hopes to expand to Pensacola, FL and Mobile, AL. We also have plans for including more in our programs besides the swimming lessons and Citizenship Awards. We would like to start an All Star Student/Swimmer program in which students would receive "All Star" towels after getting straight A's in school and learning a certain set of swimming skills. Finally, Wild and Water hopes to start a lifeguarding class program within a year from now. Our goal is to provide lifeguard training for our students, empowering them to secure a job as a lifeguard and earn money, as well as provide a much needed service to the community. We would also like to create a healthy food program, providing healthy lunches or dinners (depending on the swim lesson groups' times) and providing guidance on how to create inexpensive and quick healthy meals. We hope to start this program in 2010.
Finance details
2. Income Statement:
a. Dynamo (in-kind): $12,937.50
b. Dynamo Alpharetta (in-kind 15 kids): $4,320
c. Swim Atlanta: $11,520
d. Build A Bear Workshop (in-kind): $721
e. Finis Swimsuit Donations (in-kind): $1,242
f. Grants: $2,391
g. Fundraising: $850
h. St. Columba Pool Noodle Donation: $100
i. Total: $34,81.50
Creative funding
Wild and Water has been funded through grants from Youth Venture, the Atlanta Falcons, the Hitachi Foundation, and by Do Something. Resources of in-kind donations include Dekalb Aquatics, Dynamo Swim Club, Swim Atlanta, Emory Unversity, Build A Bear Workshop, Finis, and St. Columba's Episcopal Church. Wild and Water has also done fundraising by selling ice cream coupons at swim meets.
Other non finance needs
Wild and Water is looking for connections in the New Orleans, LA area. In particular, we are looking for swimmers who would be willing to serve as swim instructors as well as for indoor pools to use for our swim lessons. We are also happy to hear of nonprofit organizations in New Orleans or in Atlanta that are involved with low-income children and would like to partner with us!
Motivation
As a former competitive swimmer, I know the valuable lessons that sports and in particular, swimming, can provide for a child. Children in the United States, particularly African-American children, drown at an unacceptably high rate. I first had the idea for Wild and Water Swimming when I was volunteering on a camping trip with low-income children. We were on a swimming excursion at a nearby lake and kids that had no idea how to swim were just running into the water and sinking. I ended up rescuing five children that day. I see the higher rates of drowing among African-American as well as other minority children to be an indication of great injustice, and I am proud that Wild and Water Swimming is increasing the diversity of the swimmer population. In addition, as someone who has been best friends with a homeless person for nearly six years, it is extremely important to me that low-income children are given opportunities to engage in sports, just like children from wealthier families. Sports teaches a variety of vital life skills to a child, including teamwork, patience, perserverance, dedication, cooperation, and time management. I believe that the Wild and Water Swimming Program, by teaching these skills in our lessons and our Citizenship and All-Star Programs, and through providing empowering opportunities to our students like the Lifeguarding Classes Program, can effectively use the sport of swimming to propel children out of poverty.
Awards
Wild and Water and I been featured on NBC's TODAY Show, Georgia Public Broadcasting, and Channel Two Action News as well as in TIME Magazine for Kids, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, North Fulton Living, Neighbor Newspapers, County Line Magazine, the Johns Creek Herald, The Women's Sports Foundation Newsletter. I have been recognized for my work with Wild and Water through two different resolutions passed by the Georiga State Legislature and a resolution passed by the Alpharetta, GA city council. Wild and Water and I have also been recognized by the following awards: Two-time Prudential Spirit of Community Award State distinguished finalist, the Yoshiyama Award, the Kohls Kids Who Care Program, the Atlanta Falcons Community Quarterback Award, the Build A Bear Workshop Huggable Hero honorable mention, the Gloria Barron Prize Honorable Mention, the President's Volunteer Service Award, and Channel Two Action News "Great Kids."
Broader context
Wild and Water Swimming is a prime example of how sports can serve as a fantastic medium for social change. We have been very successful in impacting both the physical and mental health of our children, and instilling a love for service and compassion amongst our volunteers and our students alike. As described above, we are building Wild and Water Swimming to be more than a venture that decreases the drowning rate and teaches kids how to swim. We are building Wild and Water into a venture that catapults our students out of poverty through teaching life lessons, providing access to job opportunities to earn money, and allowing them to swim competitively for free, which potentially could provide them with scholarships for college. In addition, Wild and Water serves as a wonderful example of how any person can take what they love, be it swimming, soccer, chess, or music, and share it with other people.
Ongoing
Wild and Water Swimming will always be a part of me, even after I am done serving as Executive Director. I am hoping that by the time this occurs, Wild and Water will have an established family program, where parents are also able to learn to swim along with their kids. As an adult, I would like to volunteer with that program while the youth serve the youth.
What is your age?
18
How did you hear about this competition?
I found out about this competiton through Youth Venture, specifically at the Youth Venture National Summit.
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