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It costs on average jut £15 to teach a child to swim which includes 18 lessons and the cost of a teacher, so £15 donation could save a child from drowning.

Hue Help works with disadvantaged children in a shelter in Hue city, in central Vietnam. We collaborate with staff and the local authorities to ensure the children have a safe and happy home.  To help improve their future prospects, we support and enhance the children’s education, including help with university fees. We also run a drowning prevention programme “Swimming for Safety”  to help tackle the leading cause of death for Vietnamese children aged 1-19 years old.  Our programme focuses on teaching survival swimming. We train primary school teachers and then work with them as they teach their pupils.  Since 2011, we have trained nearly 400 teachers and 10,000 children. We believe in building local capacity to promote sustainability, and in working to understand local customs and beliefs. Vietnamese children are at the heart of the work we do.

Swimming for safety

Overview

Around 10 children aged 1-19 years old die from drowning every day in Vietnam – the equivalent of a plane crash every month.  Drowning is the leading cause of death,  even more children die from drowning than in road traffic accidents. Even though the figures are shocking,  drowning is a “silent epidemic”.  It is unseen, the causes are sometimes misunderstood and a huge amount remains to be done to address this entirely preventable human tragedy. In Hue city and throughout the province flooding is extremely common, yet many adults and children are unable to swim. Without swimming being offered in schools and a lack of trained swimming coaches, many people in Hue never have the chance to learn to swim. By providing free swimming lessons for the most disadvantaged children – who are also those most likely to be living in precarious housing in flood prone areas – we can help limit the human cost of extreme weather conditions.

The majority of deaths by drowning occur in the rural areas. Our rural swimming programme focuses on a district of Thua Thien Hue province called Phu Loc. The abundance of open water (rivers, lakes, the lagoon and the sea) means that drowning prevention here is an absolute priority. We teach children to swim in local environments – rivers, lagoons, and in open sea – under safe supervision under STA UK Swimming standards.

How does it work?

In 2011 following a successful urban programme we brought our swimming programme to rural Vietnam to provide high quality swimming tuition where it was needed most. Hue Help and our partners have now taught over 3,000 children from rural areas surrounding Hue to swim. These children learn about the dangers of open water, water safety, survival skills, and how to rescue others in emergencies.

We have also trained local school teachers and tutors to ensure that they can continue teaching these skills to even more children

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