Sweden is a country with more than 100,000 lakes and a variety of outdoor activities in the summer and winter. Knowing how to swim 200 metres is also compulsory for school children at the age of 12. As such, it is crucial for any individual residing in Sweden to know how to be safe in water.

In this context, the Swedish Life Saving Society developed the Family Water Safety programme to provide newly arrived immigrants with experienced swimming teachers and training sessions from the Swedish Lifeguard Society. The aim of the project is to develop the target group’s swimming skills so that they feel safe in water and become water safety ambassadors or swimming teachers.

The project started with a "test group swimming camp". The lessons learned from this camp formed the basis for the educational materials used in the training activities.

Up until fall 2019, the project trained 50 water safety ambassadors and 44 swimming teachers from the target groups. The project also arranged four advanced training courses for existing swimming teachers, where around 1,300 newly arrived children have attended swimming courses.

As a result of the programme, many of the water safety ambassadors and swimming teachers have found jobs as swimming teachers or water security guards.

At the initial stages of the project, the educational materials were written in easily accessible Swedish to enhance the target group's knowledge of Swedish. However, in the evaluation of the project, interviewed water safety ambassadors and swimming teachers highlighted that it is important to use the participants’ mother tongue to ensure that they fully understand what is being taught. For instance, they noted that many participants were not comfortable admitting that they did not understand what was being said, which hindered the goal of the training sessions. As a result, the water safety ambassadors and swimming teachers ended up translating the materials and holding the swimming lessons in their mother tongue. 

Newly arrived immigrant children and their families in Sweden. 

The project was funded by the Public Inheritance Fund (Allmänna arvsfonden), a Swedish State fund which supports the involvement of associations and organisation in improving the conditions for children, young people and people with disabilities.