The Kinsmen Aquatic Centre here in Lacombe is riding the high tide, after being honoured by the Canadian Red Cross, with the Partners in Humanity Citation at their Water Safety Conference in Edmonton last month, for all the work they do promote water safety.

Aquatics Supervisor Sherry Mitchell explains how her group takes swimming lessons out of the pool and into the community.

“We go out into the schools and run little safety workshops, we participate in the active living fairs with the schools as well, we do contests to promote water safety within the schools where they can enter to win a free pool party with their school, and we teach a lot of kids in central Alberta not only how to swim, but how to be safe around the water.”

She says staff at the centre are passionate about teaching water safety in all forms to everyone.

“What we do is we keep working on promoting water safety awareness in our community, try to look for more ways that we can reach people who don’t necessarily come into the pool for swimming lessons but might be around the water. Central Alberta has so many lakes and streams and open water, where it is really important to be safe both in the summer and in the winter, especially ice safety, so we’re gearing up to remind people to be safe around the ice and what that means.”

Over the summer, over 2500 kids took swimming lessons in both July and August at the Aquatic Centre, with the staff also running special programs for Lifejacket day and Water Safety Week, offering safety workshops in schools.