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Creating Access to the Freedom of Swimming
SwemKids is a community-impact program of SwemSchool, created to eliminate the financial, cultural, and access barriers that have historically kept many children and families from learning to swim.
Through partnerships with schools, community organizations, foundations, corporations, and donors, we bring swimming instruction, water safety education, scholarships, and aquatic workforce opportunities to the communities experiencing the greatest barriers to swimming and the highest rates of drowning.
Swimming Is a Life-Saving Skill.
Access to swimming has never been equal.
Historical, financial, cultural, and geographic barriers have contributed to significant disparities in swimming ability and drowning rates. SwemKids exists to help change that.
We believe everyone deserves the opportunity to develop a safe, confident relationship with the water, regardless of income, background, ability, or zip code.
Our work goes beyond teaching swimming skills. We are working to change how communities think about water, increase access to aquatic education, develop a more diverse aquatic workforce, and ultimately prevent drowning.
Leading cause of accidental death, ages 1–4
Drowning is the leading cause of accidental death for children ages 1 to 4.
~70%
Black children lack water-safety skills
Nearly 70% of Black children do not have the skills to be safe in and around the water.
TBD
Swimming ability & access disparity
79% of children in households earning less than $50,000 have little to no swimming ability. Source: USA Swimming Foundation.
Removing barriers Creating opportunity.
We partner
We work with schools, community organizations, municipalities, and foundations to find the children and communities who benefit most.
We remove barriers
Participants receive instruction and water safety education at a reduced cost, plus the equipment and resources they need to take part.
We teach
Students learn foundational skills from trained SwemSchool instructors: water comfort, breath control, floating, gliding, and movement.
We create a path forward
The scholarship is an introduction, not the end. We help families keep building skills and a lifelong relationship with the water.
A complete approach to drowning prevention.
Drowning prevention takes more than teaching someone to swim. Our work spans access, education, workforce development, and advocacy.
Access to swimming
We provide scholarships and community-based programming that remove financial and access barriers to learning how to swim.
Water safety education
We help children, adults, and families understand how to stay safer in and around pools and other bodies of water.
Aquatic workforce
We create pathways for young people and adults from underrepresented communities to become lifeguards, swimming instructors, CPR/First Aid professionals, and other members of the aquatic workforce.
Advocacy
We advocate for swimming and water safety to be recognized as essential life skills and for more children to have access to aquatic education through schools and community programs.
Every number represents a SwemJourney.
Students provided swimming and water safety opportunities.
Scholarships provided to remove financial barriers to swimming.
Schools and communities reached throughout Metro Atlanta and Georgia.
Aquatic professionals trained, certified, or employed.
One experience in the water started a movement.
SwemKids was founded by Trish P. Miller after her own near-drowning experience as a teenager.
Years later, while working in public health, Trish began to understand that her experience was part of a much larger issue: too many children and adults reach adulthood without ever having the opportunity to learn how to swim.
That realization led to a simple but powerful question:
What if learning how to swim wasn’t determined by where you lived, how much your family earned, or whether someone in your family already knew how to swim?
SwemKids International, Inc. was created to help answer that question.
What began as an effort to introduce children to the water has grown into a broader movement focused on drowning prevention, equitable access to swimming, aquatic workforce development, and changing communities’ relationships with the water.
Watch Trish’s TEDx Talk
Why Child Drownings Are a Public Health Issue & What We Can Do About It | Trish Miller | TEDxAtlanta
Our SwemJourney
2017
SwemKids is born
SwemKids is established with a mission to address disparities in swimming access and drowning prevention.
2019
Our first splash
The first school-based program launches at Dunbar Elementary in Atlanta with instruction, transportation, and equipment. Founder Trish Miller also swims her first lap.
2020
Finding a way forward
When COVID-19 closed public pools, community partners stepped forward to keep children swimming.
2022
Five years of impact
SwemKids celebrates five years of helping children and families build safer relationships with the water.
2023–25
Growing our reach
SwemKids expands partnerships, scholarships, community programming, and workforce initiatives across Metro Atlanta and Georgia.
2026
A permanent home for the mission
SwemSchool begins building its permanent headquarters in Conyers, Georgia: a dedicated home for instruction, drowning prevention, and workforce development.
Working alongside those who make it possible.
SwemKids is proud to work alongside foundations, corporations, schools, government agencies, nonprofits, and community organizations committed to making swimming and water safety more accessible, and our partners contribute more than funding, providing ideas, resources, facilities, expertise, connections, and support that help us reach more people and build safer communities.
Help Us Bring the Freedom of Swimming to More Communities.
Drowning prevention takes all of us. We work with corporations, foundations, schools, municipalities, community organizations, and individuals who believe everyone should have access to the life-saving skill of swimming.
Fund the Mission
Support scholarships, equipment, programming, facilities, and expansion into additional communities.
Bring SwemKids Programming to Your Community
Partner with us to provide swimming and water safety opportunities through your school, organization, municipality, or community.
Build the Aquatic Workforce
Support training and certification pathways for lifeguards, swimming instructors, and other aquatic professionals.
Advocate With Us
Help increase awareness of drowning prevention and expand access to swimming and water safety education.
Your gift creates access.
Your support helps remove the barriers that prevent children and families from learning how to swim.
Every gift supports our work to expand access to swimming, provide water safety education, develop the aquatic workforce, and prevent drowning.
Together, we can help more people experience the freedom of swimming.
Stay connected to the mission
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