Safer Kids

Constant “active” supervision by responsible adults is imperative.  A child should never be left unattended.  Any person charged with the critical duty of watching children in the water should be free from distraction, know how to swim well and be trained in rescue techniques.  Parents and caregivers need to enforce proper safety rules and both parent and child need to understand the importance of their role in preventing accidental drowning.

Children can also be made safer by mastery of swimming skills at an early age.  Qualified instructors in numerous public and private community swimming programs around the country can provide ongoing development of swimming skills while teaching proper behavior in and around the water.  Teaching kids to swim should be a process, not an event.  Providing constant safety reminders, ongoing lessons, practicing good habits, gaining knowledge of water dangers, and how to reduce them will all contribute to a dramatic reduction of drowning.

The Swim for Life Foundation, Inc. will be providing access to these programs through sponsored special events and coalition members.  It will also stimulate greater interest in the lifelong benefits of swimming with its media outreach activities.  Accidental drowning can eventually be eliminated worldwide and it can be dramatically reduced beginning right here, right now. Learning and practicing good pool safety habits builds confidence and greater appreciation of the lifelong health benefits of swimming…and it is fun!

To catch and retain the attention of children, parents and caregivers, the Swim for Life Foundation, Inc. has developed three cartoon characters for the Safer 3 program, one for each key element or side of the triangle that forms the program.

Timmy Tadpole©, for example, can talk to kids about how to be safer by learning to swim and behave properly around water.

Sammy Starfish© can talk to kids about how to get parents to make water safer with protective barriers, and how to do their part with good habits around the pool or spa .

Gilbert Guppy© can talk to kids about how both kids and parents learning CPR and first aid and having an emergency response plan in place with a telephone always by the pool can make a big difference in water safety.

Timmy Tadpole©, Sammy Starfish© and Gilbert Guppy© have proven very effective at grabbing attention, and so popular as teaching aids in our foundation’s original children’s activity and coloring books, that they will soon be developed into animated characters.

They sing our drowning prevention jingle, help prevent drowning through their kid friendly delivery of educational messages, and boost the fun factor for kids and parents while attracting media attention from journalists that always love the visual appeal of our drowning prevention events.