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Thirty-five more Belize City youths are safer around waterways thanks to a free, two-week swimming program hosted by the Community Policing unit and the Coast Guard. The program concluded today with an awards ceremony. 7News was there to capture the event.
Swimming is a vital life skill, but not everyone has access to lessons. To address this, the Community Policing unit and the Coast Guard teamed up for their annual free, two-week swimming program. Today, they wrapped up the initiative with an awards ceremony. Coast Guard Andrew Moody says the program was a huge success.
Andrew Moody, Belize Coast Guard
"We started with approximately 30-35 kids and we have been pushing an amazing time with these kids. Several of them came with being completely afraid of the water and a perfect example is our friend Gilfree, we put him in the water he was trembling and now he could actually swim. He could do his doggie paddle, his floats, he could do his front crawl across the pool. He might not reach all the way across at this point but he has truly transitioned through the swimming program. We have several other young people who couldn't swim at all and today we watched them swim across the pool, which was our final test for them."
"We see today wen they brought the rest of the police and they saw where the kids started to compare where the kids are the look on their face the amazement and some parent are here today and the parents were amazed to see their child actually swimming so that on its own put us at a point to say it works."
With over 10,000 young people out on summer break Gillett says that their goal is to engage them in a positive way through the swimming training.
Howell Gillett, Commander of National Community Policing Unit
"One of the objects of working with young people is to engage them in a positive way because the communities that some of these children come from, are living in the hearts of these gang territories. So they see gang as they wake up and they see gang before they go to sleep. So we want them to remain closer to law enforcement and so that we attract them to remain positive. There are about 10,000 young people who are on holiday now from the primary school level countrywide and we are at a fast pace to reach many of them. And as you've heard in my remarks today we want to reach out to as many of them not only in the Belize district because there are issues at the district level so we want to reach out to those young people also."
"What it does for policing on a day to day basis is that this is the holiday break so all the kids are out of school the incidents of drowning will decrease because these young people are now trained to swim.We don't encourage them to go into active streams but instill waters like a pool we encourage that of course under parental supervision."
Learning to swim was tough, but these two students say it was worth it.
Tessanne Panting, Swim Student
"Gliding with kicks, Because it's fun and you have to put your hand up and you have to kick all the splash."
"Doggies Paddle because you have to kick and your feet get tired and you have to pull the water."
"I would for sure come back because it's fun and once you are in a river and you don't know how to swim or if somebody is drowning you go to save them."
Jayden Cuthkelvin, Swim Student
"My favorite part of the training was the freestyle training because I am a fast learner"
"When you are doing the front float you feel like you are sinking like someone is pulling you down."
"You get to meet new people and have a lot of fun with the coast guard."
Gillett says his 22 offices across the country are implementing their own summer programs.
