Some Lord Kelvin Elementary School students will be in a better position to survive if they should find themselves in water over their heads.
The City of New Westminster is the recipient of a Swim to Survive school grant from the Lifesaving Society, which provides funds so the city can offer water survival skills to Grade 3 students.
“It will be a really, really good session. There will be lots of swimming and water safety,” said Lisa Coleman, instructional supervisor at Canada Games Pool. “There is a lot of swimming we are going to go over with them, but also a lot of water safety.”
Along with swimming, the program will include water safety skills such as life jackets, self-rescues and swimming with a buddy.
For the sessions, students have been divided into groups of beginners and intermediates.
“There are five groups of nine students. Four out of the five are all beginner swimmers,” Coleman said. “They are Level 1, some of them have Level 2. I’ve got one group where we considered them the more advanced – they are maybe Level 4 and up. It was a little surprising for us to see the number of students who we have never seen before and can’t really swim.”
The program starts on June 15, which is also the official opening day of the Moody Park outdoor pool.
Coleman said the city was thrilled to get a grant, so it’s able to teach water survival skills to local kids.
“It is totally at no cost for the students, it’s no cost to the city,” she said. “It teaches an unexpected fall into deep water and how they can survive that.”
In addition to a grant from the Lifesaving Society, the Canadian Tire Jumpstart has sunk some money into the program so the city can ensure children are safe by providing lots of hands on deck.
“There are about 45 of them so we needed enough instructors to be able to make sure the kids were safe. That was a bit of a challenge,” Coleman said.
“We are really, really excited. It is definitely a first for us, but there are legs to this. The grants program is hopefully going to continue each year so we will continue to apply for that.”
Students will walk across the street to Moody Park outdoor pool and participate in three hour-and-a-half sessions.
“There is stuff they do in the water, there is stuff they do on land. It’s really, really cool,” Coleman said. “They do that three times and at the third session, at the very end, we will be handing out certificates.”
New Westminster parks, culture and recreation hopes it will be able to offer the program to more students in the future.
“This is huge for us. We are really proud,” Coleman said.
“It was a bit of work to try and meet all the qualifications. Last year, we tried but were unsuccessful due to some limitations. It had to be Grade 3s only. Also, transportation was a bit of an issue.
“We were fortunate enough that this year Lord Kelvin had all straight Grade 3 classes and they are able to walk over.”
