Around 70 excited primary school children participated in a swimming gala at the Retreat Indoor Swimming Pool on Thursday 17 March as part of the Eco-Active Water Safety Programme.
Grade 4 to 5 children from Capricorn, Levana, Hillwood and Zerlida primary schools participated in the event.
Founder and CEO of Eco Active Belinda Minter says she started the initiative six years ago due to the number of drownings in Cape Town.
The non-profit organisation (NPO) teaches children to swim for free.
“We wanted to teach these children to swim,” Minter said. “So we teach every Grade 4 learner at four primary schools drowning prevention skills or learn them to swim.
“We identified some children who want to learn, which is what we have now, quad swimmers. First and fourth term we do quad swimming and second to third a learn-to-swim programme.”
Minter believes the children can learn life skills through sport.
“I believe we can learn life skills through sport, which is what Eco Active is about. When my children were young, I almost had a drowning incident with my youngest son and I thought how important it was to teach my child how to swim.
“We took him to Nippers Lifesaving and I loved the sport and the discipline of the sport and I loved that my kids could go into the ocean and I was not fearful.”
Seeing her children swim and enjoy the ocean made Minter think about teaching other children to swim.
“I thought, why only my kids? I want to empower other children in the community and swimming is still a privilege.”
She added that many could not afford private swimming lessons for R150 or R250 for a 30 minute lesson.
“People can’t afford that and I thought why not go out and educate the kids and teach them to swim. If you look at our stats, we have already taught over 1 000 children to swim. This is primary school level, but we also have high school level as well, so the programme has grown through the last six years.”
“We raise funds for these programmes so it’s free lessons, everything is free. They get a swimming costume, towels are donated, swimming caps and goggles. Everything is free for the community. The only times we ask the schools to pay is during a gala where they have to transport their own children, but throughout the year we transport the children ourselves.”
Allie Absalon, a swim coach from Eco Active, said the gala was a way of ascertaining the progress learners made in their learn-to-swim programme.
“We are running our water safety programme and learn-to-swim programme. Today is just a culmination of term one, where we came together with the four schools to have a gala to see what they have learnt and to also see their strengths and their weaknesses.
“This is an opportunity for us, of the work we have done, the seven lessons we gave to them to see what they have learnt. It was enjoyable to have the four schools here.”
Absalon says the seven lessons start with the basics such as blowing bubbles, kicking and going from the shallow side into the deep side.
“We go into the schools and do water safety talks and then take a group of children, such as our Grade 4 and 5 learners for swimming lessons. Some of these learners came here for the first time last year.”
He added that the children progressed in confidence.
“Just having the Grade 5s doing a race in the water already tells us that we are really progressing in those schools and they have become more confident, more calm and they want to be here.
“If you look at swimming, it is a privileged sport for many and these children come out of areas that are really disadvantaged like Lavender Hill and Vrygrond, some of them come from very poor backgrounds.
“And we are just giving them an opportunity to get into the water, to show their talents.
“You never know what you can do until you do it.”
