By Mariama Njie
Swim for Life Gambia NGO, that seeks to minimize drowning across the country by training has graduated 29 children aged 3,8-16 as third batch on Saturday at Officers Mess.
Speaking at the ceremony Sang Mendy, Swim for Life Gambia Project Coordinator commended the children for challenge themselves to undertake the training.He said the graduation marked end month long training project for children age 6-16.
‘’Our hearts are filled with sorrow because as the project was on, 2 to 3 weeks ago we learnt the loss of lives of people especially young children, through drowning and our aim is to eliminate that,’’ he said.
He pointed out that, the project started three years ago in 2016, it was conceived by the GPU and its partners.
‘’They brought together very important stakeholders such as Journalist Association of the Gambia, the Gambia swimming Association and Red Dolphins Life Guard Association,’’ he revealed.
Mr. Mendy explained that, in 2009 to 2019 about 216 lives have been lost through drowning and out of the 216 a good number of them were young people in 2019 alone 8 lives were lost through drown and last month 5 lost lives as well.
‘’We had funds from a Norwegian individual who saw our update and have been supporting us, but we also need pool that we can called our own which will help us conducting our training easy,’’ he said.
He urged Gambian people work hard to reduce the number of drown cases that are happening in the country.
Marcel Mendy, Executive Secretary of Sport Council said, in his opinion the most important life skill is to know how to swim, because it’s important in the life of human beings especially the young.
He commended Swim for Life Gambia for quite a brilliant idea, urging the NGO to maintain the momentum and work together with those that matter with a view to make it bigger
“I have learned different skills of swimming such as sustain, dive, freestyle and breaststroke which I can use to defend myself at the sea,’’ he said.
