Being surrounded by water but unable to swim seems to be chronic predicament for the territory’s kids, but the International Capital and Management’s (ICMC) Learn to Swim program on St. Thomas hopes to put an end to all that.
“Last year, when we started the program, we had 30 students and many of them were afraid to put their toes in the water,” said ICMC’s Karen Nelson-Hughes. “But by the end of the program, everyone was swimming. So, we have had a 100-percent rate of people swimming; some of them also received scholarships to go on to swim competitively with the St. Thomas Swimming Association as part of the swim team.”
ICMC is a local Economic Development Commission beneficiary, which Nelson-Hughes said is invested in helping local youth, particularly those in the company’s surrounding neighborhoods, including the Polyberg and Hospital Ground areas.
The swim program (see video link) is being put on in conjunction with the Department of Housing, Parks and Recreation and the St. Thomas Swim Association, which has been looking to bring more activities to the community pool, said Mary Malone, the pool’s assistant director of aquatic programming.
“On our island of St. Thomas, about 80 percent of the population is unable to swim,” Malone said. “On an island where there’s water all around us, that is not a very good situation. So we came together to create this program to acclimate more and more children on the island to the water.”
Malone said the program will also help to get its students prepared for marine-related jobs.
“There are a lot of jobs available on the island for people who can swim,” she said. “You can be a lifeguard, but because there are not a lot of children being introduced to the water at a young age, we have a shortage of lifeguards and other people who can work in an aquatic environment. By starting this program and getting them into this program early, we will have a much larger work base to work off of in the future.”
Many of program’s students, such as Ashley Fernandez, are already on that page. Fernandez said that while her swimming skills were already “good,” she wanted them to be “perfect” so she could be a lifeguard.
“I want to save people’s lives instead of letting them lose it,” Fernandez said.
The six-week program wraps up in August, but organizers said they are already planning for next year and are hoping that the program’s numbers continue to grow.
“From having 30 kids the first season, and now we’re up to 60. I would love to have it grow some more, so instead of having 60 kids for two hours every day, we have 60 kids every two hours, and hundreds of kids in the pools each day,” Malone said.
Malone and St. Thomas Swim Association President Joey Hamilton said the program could finally get the ball rolling on swim classes for local public school students.
“The government just passed a new bill requiring kids to swim, and while it hasn’t happened yet, we think this is a good start,” Hamilton said. “It will help all kids maybe explore some opportunities later on in life that they might not even thought about if they didn’t have those skills.”
