Louisa Learn to Swim Program

The Louisa Department of Parks and Recreation supports full and partial scholarship learn-to-swim programs during the summer. The Ben Hair Just Swim for Life Foundation (BH-JSL) will provide matching volunteer support and monetary donations to support this program. Volunteer support entails providing Water Safety Instructors and Instructor aides for this program at no cost. The program will be based on the successful program that was run last summer and on successful school partnerships established in the City of Charlottesville.

In the summer of 2012, the Louisa County Department of Parks and Recreation provided American Red Cross Learn to Swim programs at the Louisa County Aquatic Facility. Courses included Parent Child Aquatics, Preschool Aquatics, and youth, teen, and adult Learn to Swim programs. As part of an ongoing collaboration, the Louisa County Department of Parks and Recreation received funds from BH-JSL to fund Learn to Swim programs that trained 150 full scholarship children to swim.

The expanded infrastructure of the program additionally helped to train paying or partial-scholarship swimmers as well. To continue this successful program, we are proposing a collaboration with Louisa County schools that would train 360 9th grade students how to swim during the Spring and Summer of 2013. We will evaluate the success of this program by the ability to establish a sustainable Learn to Swim program that will serve Louisa County, the ability to train at least 360 full scholarship swimmers and potentially 500 children overall.