{"id":916349,"date":"2022-01-14T19:00:01","date_gmt":"2022-01-14T19:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/news\/2022\/01\/14\/water-safety-top-of-mind-for-children-who-graduated-from-maitlands-swimming-academy\/"},"modified":"2022-01-14T19:00:01","modified_gmt":"2022-01-14T19:00:01","slug":"water-safety-top-of-mind-for-children-who-graduated-from-maitlands-swimming-academy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/01\/14\/water-safety-top-of-mind-for-children-who-graduated-from-maitlands-swimming-academy\/","title":{"rendered":"Water safety top of mind for children who graduated from Maitland\u2019s swimming academy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Cape Town – With the hot summer weather propelling families to public swimming pools and the ocean, water safety is top of mind for a group of 60 young people \u2013 mostly from disadvantaged backgrounds \u2013 who graduated on Thursday from an aquatic academy in Maitland.<\/p>\n

As well as swimming and life-saving skills, the children received lectures in firefighting and first aid at the Warobile Lifesaving Aquatics Academy run by retired City law enforcement officer Keith Abrahams.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Provincial ACDP leader Ferlon Christians, who served with Abrahams in the City\u2019s law enforcement unit, was a guest at the graduation ceremony.<\/p>\n

He said that he had attended the graduation as a measure of support for his former colleague\u2019s initiative and that he was looking at ways in which the programme could garner more support and grow.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis might look like a small thing, but the impact is huge because it is every household, every community where these children come from that will be impacted.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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MORE ON THIS<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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A parent of one of the graduates, Annameka Carter, said: \u201cThis is the first time we\u2019ve had something like this in our area and water safety is very important as are all the other aspects of saving a life such as fire and rescue, first aid etc.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe kids that are here come from the poorer communities and this helps to keep them away from some of the negative elements that are found in our areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said that the programme was<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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free of charge and that was why funding and donations were crucial to keep it going.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe things they have learnt here in these 19 days \u2013 such as preventing fires, swimming, lifesaving skills, are not things they can easily forget and will stay with them for life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abrahams said that when some of the funding he received for the project fell short, he had to dig into his own pocket.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI was determined to make it happen for these children.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was almost R1000 every day, just for transport\u201d<\/p>\n

The children taking part in the programme came from the communities of Kensington, Factreton and Maitland and nearby townships. Abrahams now wants to expand the project to Gugulethu and Khayelitsha.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cape Town – With the hot summer weather propelling families to public swimming pools and the ocean, water safety is top of mind for a group of 60 young people \u2013 mostly from disadvantaged backgrounds \u2013 who graduated on Thursday from an aquatic academy in Maitland. As well as swimming and life-saving skills, the children […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-916349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=916349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=916349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=916349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=916349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}