Swim
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Learn
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Thrive
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Swim ≈ Learn ≈ Thrive ≈
Welcome 2025!
The year came in like a fury and we’re rolling with it. With expanded partnerships, heart-meltingly generous volunteers, unbounded fearless participants, and water water everywhere, we’ve got this. We have good work to do this year.
Access to essential lifesaving services, water safety training, and clean water will always be foundational concerns, especially for low-income, women, children, Black, immigrant and indigenous persons - frontline populations. An estimated 356,000 cardiac arrests happen in the US annually, most are fatal. A silent killer, drowning is the third leading cause of injury death for children ages 5-14. In the US more than 3,500 people drown every year; In Oregon last summer, we lost 16 Oregonians between June-July, almost all of them in rivers and lakes. At the same time climate change events are more severe than ever, with wildfires, harmful algal blooms, flooding and groundwater contaminants threatening water quality everywhere. This is to say, the more people who know CPR, and to swim, and to care for the planet, the better our whole communities will be.
The WaterStrong mission is to end drowning and promote safer, cleaner waters. To do this, we deliver programs in basic water safety, swimming, first aid / CPR, and environmental education. In 2024, we distributed over 1,600 lifejackets, hosted 34 EcoSwim clinics, 9 Adult & Pediatric First Aid / CPR / AED workshops, and certified 15 new Red Cross CPR Instructors. We plan to continue this growth in 2025.
Winter-Spring 2025 Events
Eco-Swim clinics: Sundays 1/5, 2/23, 3/9, 4/6, 5/18, 6/15
Volunteer for an EcoSwim clinic
Red Cross Adult & Pediatric First Aid / CPR / AED certification: 1/25, 2/8, 2/9, 2/14, 2/22, 4/13, 5/4, 6/8
Sign up for a Red Cross CPR class
Rainy Days Book Club: Blue Mind by Wallace Nichols, virtual discussion on World Water Day 3/22
Registration link coming soon
Outreach days: TBD
As We Care For The Water, The Water Cares For Us.
The WaterStrong mission is to save lives and destroy barriers. Barriers to water access, swimming lessons, tools and skills for water safety, safe swimming areas, clean water, healthy environments, education. Barriers rooted in racism, classism, the race toward “progress”. Those barriers exist even in our own backyards, and they directly impact all of us.
With over 380,000 drowning deaths every year, drowning is the third leading cause of accidental injury death in the world. In the United States, with 4,000 deaths each year, drowning is the second leading cause of death for children 1-4 years old, and the third leading cause in every other age group through adults 29 and over. Males are four times more likely to die by drowning than females.
Among young people age 5-19, drowning rates for blacks, indigenous and people of color are 2 - 10 times higher than for whites. In the United States, nearly 70% of black people cannot swim compared to 40% of whites. Those disparities did not exist in the past and should not exist now. We must take care of each other in the water because every drowning death is preventable, and because there’s no defensible justification for barriers to swimming and water access.
When we look at the environment, we know the earth, like the human body, is 71% water. Yet less than .025% of that water is accessible as freshwater in lakes, rivers and streams. And almost every drop of that surface water is being used, is overdrawn, or is contaminated. We must take care of our water, because we depend on every drop and there’s so very little of it available to us.
The WaterStrong mission is to end drowning and promote cleaner, safer waters.
The WaterStrong curriculum delivers an integrated approach to building life saving skills in the water to build confidence and understanding the water to build connection with the earth.
When a child feels safe and confident in the water, they feel connected to the water, and naturally care for the health and safety of the water.
Swim! Learn! Thrive!
Leadership
It’s all about the water. WaterStrong is a 501c3 non-profit organization led by a dedicated team of volunteer board members, all experts in water safety and water stewardship.
WaterStrong is building the next generation of confident swimmers and clean water stewards.