I'm not a brilliant swimmer but still swimming has been such a lifelong gift for me. It's all of great exercise, thinking time, super social, connection with nature, and it's even an effective treatment for physiological symptoms of stress, if needed.

As a kid, I was lucky enough to have my mum take me to swimming lessons, and later my granddad take me to countless training sessions as a teenager.

But it's not only that 'nice to have'. Drowning is a silent epidemic that claims an estimated 360,000 lives every year, many of them children and is the 3rd leading cause of unintentional injury and death worldwide.

I've long wanted to swim the channel, so why not?! I was lucky to have the opportunity to learn to swim; I'd really like others to feel the same benefit. The SwimTayka mission to give disadvantaged communities around the world access to swimming teachers is definitely worth fundraising for!