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.

WaterStrong is about drowning prevention and environmental education.

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!