Swim for Life provides survival swimming lessons, water safety education, and community awareness of drowning issues.

In 2013, while conducting research on the impacts of endemic flooding on mines and UXO, Golden West researchers learned of the appalling statistics of global drowning of children. In Vietnam, as many as 40 people a day drown, many of them children. We resolved to do what we could to mitigate these losses.

We began by building two above-ground pools collocated with primary schools in Quang Binh Province. We thought that teaching children to swim would “inoculate” them from drowning during the annual wet season flooding. Partnering with several drowning prevention NGOs and the Provincial Departments of Education and Training and People’s Committees, we developed water safety presentations and community awareness campaigns.

From these modest beginnings, Swim for Life Vietnam has provided survival swimming lessons to almost 18,000 children in Quang Binh and Quang Tri Province, partnered with the Global Health Advocacy Incubator/ Tobacco-Free Kids organizations. Golden West has provided over one million U.S. dollars of our own funds in support of Swim for Life projects since 2014.