Gecko Inc. – Like a fish in water

Learning how to swim has always been a very important thing for me. I learnt to swim very young and my parents always remind me of the importance of acquiring this skill. I think this is the reason why I want to teach children how to swim and especially considering that Sri Lanka is an island, a child’s ability to feel safe around water is critical to preventing drowning.

The Gecko Inc. service group focuses on helping disadvantaged Sri Lankan children to develop basic water safety skills. To achieve our service goal, our group is meeting every Thursday after school to plan every session we will spend with the kids. The most challenging part in planning sessions is to find a funny way to teach them how to swim. Learning how to swim just by doing back and forth is boring and the objective is to make them enjoy what they are doing. As my second year in this service, my role is now to show new members how to create an effective plan and how to teach and help kids in the swimming pool. We are working with students from the Kottawa Vidyadana Mahavidyalaya School, we have kids of a large range of ages. From the past experience, at the beginning of our session, kids are quite shy and stressed around water, so our first step will be to make them feel comfortable with us and then in the water. We are putting at their disposal a large range of equipment provided by the school such as board, floating belt, noodle pool, balls, glasses… Last year we faced some problems, not everyone was going in the swimming pool due to forgetting their swimsuits. Having a lack of people is dangerous in this kind of service where we teach kids who don’t have access to education on water safety. So this year I decided to send an email every Wednesday evening to inform and remind people to bring their stuff. I hope that this action will help everyone to remember to bring their swimsuits with them.

Being part of this service provides me opportunities to develop many skills: leadership, organizational, communication, thinking  and responsibility. It’s an experience that bring me the knowledge of being aware of my strengths and weaknesses but also to help Sri Lankan children that don’t have access to the ability to learn how to swim.