Swim Stars Programs Gets Off to a Start

The Belize Police Department and the Belize Coast Guard, in partnership with the Princess Hotel, are providing swimming classes for children. A group of fifty kids from ten different communities across Belize City were chosen to participate in the Swim Stars Program. The swimming classes will run for two weeks. Participants will learn basic swimming techniques to improve their safety while swimming. We heard from the organizers.

Howell Gillett

ACP Howell Gillett, Commander, National Community Policing

“We are trying to achieve a number of things and some of them include, we are trying to build partnership with the community. We know kids will go into water wherever it is, in ponds, streams, rivers, sometimes supervised and sometimes not supervised. One of our aims is to save lives so we try to attract young people to law enforcement. But it is not just about the safety, yes it is important to save lives, but it is also important to build good relation shops with the community, especially young people, because what happens on a normal basis with the kids from these communities, kids see police in action in there law enforcement duties, so when the police come to make an arrest or to effect a warrant, so they see police as the bad guys, but we want to show young people and their parents that policing is not just about the type one style policing. There is more to policing than that.”

Andrew Moody

Ensign Andrew Moody, Swimming Instructor, Belize Coast Guard

“Today is the beginning of our Swim Pro Program and the Belize Coast Guard has partnered with the Belize Police Department to bring swimming to the children as a part of the program. As we notice the kids they love water but they are afraid to get their heads under the water and to properly learn to swim you must be able to be comfortable in the water with your heads going in and out of the water. We find that throughout summer time in Belize we do a lot of caye and beach trips and pools in the back yard. The benefit of this is getting your kids to learn how to swim and so that the parents can be comfortable having their kids going over to swim or going on trips and stuff like that during the summer time.”