CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — With summer in full swing, one nonprofit called Carolina Swims Foundation is making sure children know how to swim.
The organization is providing free swim lessons and water safety instruction to underserved and foster care children. They are teaming up with the North Carolina Aquatic Club, a year-round youth competitive swim team in Chapel Hill, to teach the children of White Oak Foundation Summer Enrichment Camp.
The founder and president of Carolina Swims Foundation and a family nurse practitioner, Sarah Chaires, said White Oak Foundation Summer Enrichment Camp provides academic support and food for children in need during the summer. The children are bused every Tuesday and Thursday to Chapel Hill for their swim lessons.
“In North Carolina, there are 15,000 children in foster care; so, those children don’t necessarily have those lifelong invested parents that have the financial and technological resources to be able to provide swim lessons,” Chaires said. “Then, you have the undeserved population, and with technology becoming more daunting, these children go on learning, not knowing how to swim; and those cultures teach them, as it should, that water is a death trap. Because you don’t have that lifesaving skill of knowing how to swim, then the water is a death trap.”
Chaires said she started the organization because, as a provider at the hospital, she saw way too many drownings of children that could’ve been prevented. As a former competitive swimmer and as a current USA swimming coach, she wanted to prevent those drownings. This led her to creating the foundation where she has given the gift of swimming to 550 children out of 22 counties within North Carolina.
One of the volunteers with the North Carolina Aquatic Club, helping to teach these kids, is Audrey Wolk. She is an East Chapel Hill High School senior who has always loved being in the water. Wolk said she attends many meets and will eventually be taking her talents to Columbia University, where she committed for college.
This summer, Wolk, 17, decided to use her swimming experience to help others.
“I mean, I definitely had the privilege to learn how to do this. I had like the money and the resources but some of these kids don’t have that,” Wolk said.
Another volunteer, who is trying to make a difference for these children, is Kenzie Kim. She is 15-years-old and attends Durham Academy.
Kim wanted to be a part of this initiative because her sister had done it and told her how memorable the experience was. Also, Kim explains she couldn’t imagine going through life not being able to know how to swim, so she wanted to help give that opportunity to others.
“It makes me fell so happy because I have a girl in my group and she loves going under water, and I know that some of the kids here are scared of going under water so the fact that every practice she asks to go to the deep end and try blowing bubbles out of her nose, and make air rings, it makes me so happy that they are also getting more comfortable to the water too,” Kim said.
During Kim’s time volunteering, one of the kids in her group did not have goggles and asked if she had extra. From this moment, Kim wanted to make sure all the kids had access to goggles. So, she started a goggle drive, collecting goggles from swimmers who had a spare.
“I also thought about when I was growing up swimming that it was really hard to swim without goggles, and I don’t know how I would swim if I didn’t have goggles,” Kim said.
Kim said what makes this drive even more special is that the kids get to keep the goggles when the camp is over.
On July 18, the organizations will welcome Olympic Gold Medalist and Head UNC Men’s and Women’s Swimming & Diving Coach, Mark Gangloff, with his Olympic medals. The kids will be able to learn from him and get to try all those medals on, in hopes of inspiring them for the future.
We’re told they also invited the Jacques Gilbert, mayor of Apex, and Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger.