Our water safety/wise initiative with the community is about ensuring water safety is crucial for the well-being of all individuals. Our initiative focuses on promoting awareness, education and taking proactive measures to prevent water-related accidents and incidents.
We wanted to do something that would open the doors so everyone could get involved. We came up with the idea of a Water Wise Event – Friday 29th September 11am-2pm – over 200 people attended.
Covering Water Skills for Life
Coastguard Boat Safety
Splashsave
Working with parents and caregivers to educate them around water safety working through the splashsave water safety program.
We initially did a survey with the community in July 23 around our program asking users to rank each of the aquatic activities below in importance to you, Water Safety came out on top.
Drowning in Nz continues to be the 2nd highest cause of accidental death. Our country is surrounded by waterways and as New Zealanders we are fortunate to have many lakes/beaches and rivers that our country has to offer.
We have identified that there is an urgent need to educate our community and raise awareness about water safety. We aim to reduce the number of water related accidents and create a Water Wise community.
We do regular Bluelight events at the pools and they offer free entry to the pool, hot dog, and a drink. We wanted to look at the reasoning behind this event and what the actual outcome was to host them.
After meeting with Bluelight and concluding that it really was just a free activity to the community we discussed my ideas around having a water safety event., Water Wise.
Working with partners we can make a significant difference preventing water related incidents and ensure the wellbeing of our community at the same time.
Financials was a big barrier for us when we started to look at these kind of events so partnering up with Bluelight was a must. The community have just gone through a large rate increase so as a council we are trying to work as smart as we can.
It has been a great journey over the last 12months for the team. We have done a 360 turnaround with staff engagement and development.
We have staff that have become educators around water safety, attending educational training and workshops to help gain the knowledge and understanding.
We have a team of staff that have grown with confidence to approach customers around water safety and help lead productive water safety sessions.
Tokoroa is a small community and change can be difficult we have embraced the locals and got them on board to join the journey with us.
We have recruited two locals that have been volunteers in the aquatics industry for many years. We have invested in them by offering training and completing recognized qualifications. Something they have never had the opportunity to do. Having people who already have respect in the community helps us to engage and gain trust when introducing new learnings.
We have worked hard with our partners around getting the tools to deliver the water safety sessions and awareness days.
We now have life jackets a boat and trained staff to deliver several different water safety initiatives.
We have also just received funding through Tū Manawa Active Aotearoa Fund so this will now allow us to do another three Water Wise events across all three pools during the summer.
The Water Wise event was engaging, interactive and enjoyable for participants of all ages, we incorporate activities, games and simulations that make learning about water safety fun and memorable. This event will now go out to all three pools across the summer, offering water safety skills to each district. A life skill that every person in the community should have access to.
We are also working closely with Swim Waikato, running the water safety in schools’ programmes. This is offering consistency to all the schools that are participating. Supporting teachers and caregivers to help deliver water safety skills will help reduce incidents around the water.
We have introduced water safety into our main line learn to swim programme. Research shows that having a combination of water safety and swimming skills is most likely to help reduce drownings.
Building great partnerships will allow us to provide better events for the community, pulling resources together to have better outcomes.
These events are so important in our community. A lot of households don’t have a lot of free money for secondary spends and unfortunately for a lot of our community this means no swimming lessons for their Tamariki.
We wanted to provide a service that would reach out and offer a skill for life for every child in the district.
Humans are not specifically aquatic creatures, so learning to stay safe in water requires us to adapt to a new environment. Watery environment changes our breathing, gravity, and emotions from the way we feel them on dry land. We wanted to offer a session where we the providers could offer our community a safe place to adjust to being comfortable and confident when in deep water.
We had over 200 participants and it was a great success. Teaching the community basic water safety skills.
Building confidence in deep water, using the coast guard boat and understanding the importance of wearing a lifejacket.
We received so much thanks and praise from participants all asking when we would be hoisting another Water Wise event.
This is what local community pools should be all about.
