Last week, the first major challenge of our new Swimming for Safety expansion programme was completed: we successfully trained and qualified 34 swimming teachers and 2 assistant teachers within the local secondary school system and Red Cross in Thua Thien Hue province, central Vietnam.
Teaching CPR to swimming teachers in Phu Loc
The teachers, most of whom are secondary school physical education teachers, took part in an IFSTA (International Federation of Swimming Teachers’ Associations) teachers course, which follows a syllabus specifically designed to create an international swimming standard. On the 6 day course, 2 days were spent in a public swimming pool in Hue city centre, and the other 4 days were held on Canh Duong beach, one of our open water swimming teaching locations in Phu Loc.
The course was a challenge – all the course manuals and resources had to first be translated into Vietnamese. As the course was delivered by an English swimming teacher tutor, a translator was required to translate everything verbally into Vietnamese. Thanks to the dedication of the of our partner (Thua Thien Hue Red Cross), the secondary school teachers, Garry Seghers (the IFSTA tutor) and our local staff, the course was ultimately carried out successfully!
Aside from providing knowledge on how to teach swimming, the course also provided the teachers with water rescue skills and knowledge, the ability to perform CPR to adults and children, and knowledge on how to make an open water location safe.
We would like to thank the STA and IFSTA for their support with this training course, as well as Thua Thien Hue Red Cross for their excellent preparation for the course.
We are now busy setting up all the locations for the programme to begin in a couple of weeks. Watch this space for more updates. In the meantime, here’s a couple of news stories that have picked up on this course already:
