Aqua-Evolution Swim Program
Aqua-Evolution, Tauranga's newest survival swim school, is experiencing rapid growth as parents react to the recent publicity of high numbers of drowning and water incidents throughout the country in the first three months of 2009. To March 27, 37 New Zealanders lost their lives in immersion accidents.
Drowning is the second highest cause of unintentional death in the 0-5yr age group, with an average of 20 drownings per year in the 0-15 year age group, and almost 80 children hospitalised following immersion accidents each year. "We're finding that parents are reacting to the statistics and the publicity of the drowning rate by finally realising how important it is for their children to have some water safety skill to fall back on in the event of a problem" says Rachel Rolston, founder of the Aqua-Evolution Survival Swim Program. "The benefit to the parents of our kids is that we don't have any interest in making any of these kids the next Olympian - all we want is for them to live, and that's where we focus our attention".
"Swim schools traditionally encourage young children to feel confident in the water by holding regular 'Mummy and Me' classes that utilise preschool songs and lots of colourful toys. We find that using psychology, reflexes, and learned behaviour works much better in actually teaching the younger kids to survive unexpected immersion," says Rolston, "and the first step is removing the parent from the immediate area so that children understand that they are not here to play. They're here to learn to survive, no matter how young they are. There's not much that compares to the thrill of watching an infant child roll and float for the first time, and knowing that you may just have given a child the skill to save their own life one day."
Aqua-Evolution broke away from traditional swim school teaching and developed a program focusing on safety and survival rather than having a tunnel-vision towards stylised or competitive swimming. The program developed it's own teacher training program that takes over 120 hours of practical work to complete, most of which is done under direct supervision with an Aqua-Evolution Accredited Teacher Trainer and requires the applicant to be screened for at least 20 hours in-water before being accepted for training.
Parental feedback indicates that the survival training program has proven it's value, with children aged between 16 months and 12 years quickly developing skill and confidence in the water in as little as 3-4 weeks. While the dropout rate expected with every weekly activity of its type is only 0.5%, the growth rate is established at 34% in it's first 10 week period, far better than expected by management and staff.
Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/
