In 2015, Y-USA launched the Safety Around Water Program. Safety Around Water is a program designed to reduce children’s risk of drowning by teaching them basic water safety skills. Given that two children drown and die every day in the United States, a commitment to water safety is as important as ever. Drowning is responsible for more deaths among children 1-4 than any other cause except birth defects and the second leading cause of injury-related death for children ages 5 to 14. In ethnically diverse communities, the youth fatal drowning rate is 2-3 times higher than the national average. 60% of African-American, 45% of Hispanic/Latino and 40% of Caucasian children cannot swim. In underserved communities, 79% of children who live in households with incomes less than $50,000 have no/low swimming ability.

At the CDYMCA, we offer our Safety Around Water Program free of cost to elementary students around the Capital Region. Our program focuses on the following: 

• Basic swim skills, like floating and blowing bubbles.
• Safety skills, like CPR, identifying a safe place to swim, and water rescue techniques (“Reach or Throw, Don’t Go”).
• Survival swim skills, like pushing off the bottom of the pool to resurface (“Jump, Push, Turn, Grab”) and a method of swimming on your front and back (“Swim, Float, Swim”).

This program is free of cost to participants because of donations from people like you. Donate today to help us continue to keep the children of the Capital Region safe!