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What's good, y'all? Welcome back to another episode of Black in Aquatics: Freedom Through Swimming. This is Coach T. I'm here back again with Coach Shana Lorde. This time we're going to talk about Shana's non profit, Diversified Swimming. Shana, can you give us a background to your non profit? So Diversified Swimming is, we are on a mission to teach Children how to swim in underserved and underrepresented communities.

So we were reaching Children of color, Children of diverse backgrounds, Children that have unique abilities as well. So we're looking at Children with autism, adults with autism, and we work to not just work so that we're teaching them, but we want to spread that. throughout the state of Florida and eventually throughout [00:01:00] different countries.

We want to be international on that end. Okay, awesome. And today we had an event on splash back to school. I think it was a very successful event. It was great. I got to guard today. How would you say the turnout for you was in our first event? So for our first event, splash back into school book bag giveaway, I thought it was excellent.

I thought, you know, everyone came out. The children learned how to swim. They learned where they were in the water. Mm-Hmm. like some of these kids, they just knew, they knew how to swim, you know? Yeah. They, they're like Michael Phelps. They have the confidence and they, and then all of a sudden they're go like, wait a minute.

What? , you know, like, and watching their expressions and watching them get excited about learning new strokes and new things in water. I think that was great. And then at the end, being able to watch 'em have little races and test. skills that they had just recently learned. That was amazing. So with Diversified Swimming, you said your goal is not just focused on the youth, [00:02:00] but you're also focused on the adults.

Can you go a little bit more into that portion? So what I find is that a lot of Parents are pushing their Children to learn how to swim. Yeah, absolutely. But one of the issues is that they don't know how to swim. And because Children are Children and they do childish things, they could get hurt. And that parent is not able to self save them because they can't swim.

And to relieve that burden, because that will be a burden to watch your child drown. Something 100 percent preventable. Yeah I want to focus on teaching families how to swim. Teaching families. So when you say teaching families, what does that look like to you? So teaching families how to swim means teaching their children, teaching whoever their caregivers are about water safety, not just how to swim, but also about water safety and also giving them the resources to learn CPR.

Yeah. Because , that is [00:03:00] definitely a need and something that a lot of the black families that I've come across, they don't have that certification. They don't know how to do CPR and they don't know that in a drowning, you want to do rescue breeding first. You know, and you're over here pumping on someone, beating on someone's chest, and it's not going very far, and they need to breathe.

Yeah, so I completely get that. I know, , some people don't even know that hands only CPR is even a thing. And it is, you know what I'm saying? So I think that with diversified swimming and that CPR component alone is incredible, because, like you said, a lot of people don't know the steps of CPR and, , the process and how to actually do it correctly.

So I think that's pretty cool. Focusing on families. Where do you see Diversified Swimming in two or three years in two or three years will be household name, not just here in the U. S. Across across borders. Nice. We will be in different countries.

We're looking at Belize [00:04:00] and The Bahamas. We're looking at Panama. We're looking at Europe. Hopefully we can get a connection with SoulCap. That would be awesome. That would be awesome we've already linked up with Black Girls Sunscreen. So I think that moment is amazing. That Black Girls Sunscreen saw the mission and saw the vision of Diversified Swimming and wanted to jump on board with that.

Yeah, and I would have to say as a board member. I am honored that you asked me to be a part of your team. I am looking forward to this journey as well. , tell the people where they can find you online so they can find more information or support what you're doing. You can find us@diversifiedswimming.com online and you can get our all our information.

We are also on Instagram where you can find us at Diversified Swimming Inc.. Awesome. And I'll put those links in the show notes. Thank you, Coach Shana. Thank [00:05:00] you.