The USA Swimming Foundation raises funds to support programs that save lives and build champions–in the pool and in life.

As the philanthropic arm of USA Swimming, the USA Swimming Foundation works to strengthen the sport from grassroots to gold medals. Whether we’re…

Happy International Water Safety Day!  Did you know that today, May 15, is International Water Safety Day?  The members of the U.S. Congress know, because a group representing drowning prevention efforts in the U.S. is…

Have a great program but no way to fund it?  Crowdfunding could be the answer.  Social media is changing how we do business in more ways than one.  The old way of doing business meant funding programs by applying for grants, hosting charity runs or selling candy to raise money. …

Are you a ‘buy every child safety product on the market’ parent or a ‘well, a few bumps won’t kill them’ parent?  Is every table in your house surrounded with foam padding or do you silently curse when you are visiting someone with an indecipherable toilet lock? 

We…

I

’m a mom and I’m pissed off.  Not a bit concerned.  Not even angry.  I’m pissed off as in, ‘I have a flame thrower and I’m not afraid to use it’ pissed off.  Why?  Because child safety is about as big a mom issue as you can get, and yet children keep drowning and no one is talking about…

How can I teach thee?  Let me count the ways....

1. Traditional swimming lessons  - through your Y, park district pool, community pool, local swim instructor or any other well-regarded program.  The classes should be fun and not at all…

I recently wrote about a group of lifeguards was fired for posting a video of them lip-syncing to the wildly successful Gangnam rap song. Variations on Gangnam have garnered over…

“If you set sights high and you stick with it, you can make real progress.”  Dr. Paul Farmer

Dr. Paul Farmer is a medical anthropologist and physician.  He is a founding director of Partners in Health (PIH), an international non-profit…

Are we ‘Too many cooks spoil the soup’ or ‘Stone soup’?   (Stone soup is the fable where the hungry soldier puts a stone in a pot of water and convinces the townspeople to add to the ‘delicious’ stone soup by adding a turnip, a potato, a carrot, until it really does become a delicious soup for the whole…

Even the best swimmers are not drown-proof, and Shallow Water Blackout can be the cause.  I’ve had some inquiries about Shallow Water Blackout recently which led me to develop a list of resources.  I thought I’d share them here, starting with a description of the issue…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ohqy7aAwMc

A group of lifeguards was fired for creating a video on YouTube.  This link has over 1,000,000 hits so far.  Yes, that is 1 million people who now know what a lifeguard uniform looks like.  It’s 1 million…

That’s right, cell phones don’t work when they are wet.  I’ve heard the trick about putting them in a bag of rice to dry them out, so if you leave your phone outside during a rain storm or it tips out of your pocket into a puddle, you can bring it back to life in a day.  That’s great, but…

I am.  Why just last week, while picking up school supplies for my kids, I expressed eagerness that school is starting soon.  Judging from the shocked looks on the other mom’s faces I might as well have said I hate my kids and am miserable being around them.  (For the record, I love them intensely, but after…

My kids and I headed to one of our favorite places last weekend, the Millennium Fountain in Chicago.  After a week of blistering temperatures, the fountain was packed with kids (and adults) splashing with joyful abandon.  The Fountain is brilliant in it’s design, huge slabs of rough…

Social Impact bonds are “a new strategy for improving the performance of government programs. In short, private investors — typically foundations — pay the costs of a new program in its early years, and the government later repays the investors, often with a bonus, as long as the program…

Measurable results.  Sustainable results.  Analysis.  Cost-benefit analysis.

These aren’t just buzzwords.  These are the criteria that all drowning prevention programs should be measured against.

I was thrilled to read the…

I’ve highlighted several initiatives in the past few months.  Time for an update.

1.  Petition to the United…

We don’t get no respect.

One of the most common themes I hear from aquatics professionals is, ‘Why don’t people realize this is important?  Why don’t they understand?’.

The next most common theme is ‘should…

There are as many messages about water safety as there are organizations and individuals working on the issue - which makes it pretty confusing to the general public.  The irony is that all the messages are pretty much the same.  I think we need to make them uniformly consistent -…

How do we end drowning?  We change people’s behavior around water. 

How do we change behavior?  We change intrinsic motivation, how someone acts even if no one else is around. 

How do we change intrinsic motivation?  Tell people what…