Thanks to the Sandals Foundation, a “Learn-to-Swim week” sponsored on Telescope Beach was a huge success.
The event, held the week before Christmas, hosted over 30 instructors from around Grenada who were bussed up to the site to teach over 120 beginning swimmers during the week. Students could take an hour lesson each day for 4 days in a row and by the end of that time be, water safe: float, blow bubbles, kick, forward motion.
Deb Eastwood, Director of the Get Grenada Swimming initiative, came up with the idea of a “Pop-Up Swim Week” after seeing all the pop-up sites for vaccinations. She commented, “It has always been hard for us not to be able to give the same swimming support to Grenville that we do to all the other parts of the island, because every time we have a National Learn to Swim Week, there have been major amounts of sargassum in that area of the island and it keeps us from hosting Grenville as a site. I was up in the area in mid-November and noticed the site was free from sargassum and decided we could do a swim week just for this one location. A request to Sandals Foundation for funding was met with a positive response and a tent was donated by Republic Bank and all went beautifully. We are so grateful.”
One of the other factors that made the week a success was a partnership with the Grenada Education and Development Programme (GRENED) a non-profit based in Grenville that focuses on scholarships and support for youth schooling and their leadership development. The organisation was engaged to help get the word out, clean up the beach, provide music, food, and equipment and overall to help make the event a success. Executive Director former Ambassador Dessima Williams stated that GRENED welcomes opportunities to provide skills, socialisation and fun for young people. This is our third event with Learn to Swim this year and it has been awesome!” She added that “families are quite happy for the safety that being able to swim provides to their children.” She concluded that her organisation has “a solid partnership with Get Grenada Swimming and we look forward to working together again in 2022.”
Eastwood was happy to report that because of the swim week, Telescope is now going to be a regular swim site for free lessons on Saturday mornings and will start up on 8 January at 9 am. People interested could contact Shaniqua Cobb, Site Supervisor at 422-4906. For more information about other Saturday swim sites, please check out the Get Grenada Swimming website at www.getgrenadaswimming.com or call Deb Eastwood at 404-5237.
Grenada Youth Adventurers
Deb has been around awhile, always has her hand in someting when it come to projects like this. My thought is if you live on an island learn to swim, I did and love it! Next I became a certified diver, now there is world-class fun I tell you.
This is wonderful news and I hope it can be spread across the country to assist more folks in learning to swim.
We need more of these incentive to help get us out of this depression.