Vietnam Swans

Joanne Stewart, Director of , sends out the 2011 Summer Newsletter (Swim Vietnam is supported by the Vietnam Swans).

(formerly the Tribob Children’s Swimming Program) is having a great summer.  We achieved our highest results yet in Program 2 with 88 per cent of children completing the course able to swim at least 20m.  This is a great testament to our Vietnamese swim teachers who are doing a fabulous job!

Thanks to some very experienced volunteers (Lucy and Jenny), we were able to implement a class for children with disabilities.  These children have cerebral palsy and seeing them gain confidence and feel the joy of the water is wonderful.  They are all progressing really well but there is one baby (Cun) who always makes me smile. Before coming to class she could not hold her head up and just wanted to be held close all the time. Now, she loves floating on her back, being moved from side to side. She can now lift her head up and smiles and laughs during every class, as do her mother, father and both grandfathers who come to watch every lesson.

This year we are making some initial inroads into becoming financially self sustaining.  We have started holding adult classes, the fee for which is used directly to fund the free lessons for children.  We already have around 40 adults participating in lessons, most of whom are women. They are hoping to be able to take their own children to the beach and teach them to swim, which will significantly benefit the whole community in the long-term.  Thank you to Tanya Carmont, who was a great help with this and numerous other projects. We are also starting to sell merchandise, so watch this space – you will soon be able to own your very own Swim Vietnam rash vests and T-shirts!

As part of our continuing focus on safety issues, we held our inaugural water safety presentation in Luong The Vinh primary school just before summer holidays started. We taught all the children basic water safety rules, general beach and river awareness and a water safety song.  We will take this presentation to all schools in the area when the school holidays are over in August.

Funding request

We have received a significant donation which will allow us to build a new swimming pool in Hoi An.  We now need to raise additional funds in order to build a roof, fence, changing rooms, equipment room etc. This new pool will allow us to teach many more children as we are currently reaching only a fraction of the children in Hoi An. If you or your company would like to help with this, please contact me at .  Donations can now be made directly via our website at .

Many thanks to all our supporters.  Particularly to Barclays Capital, Vietnam Swans, Montgomerie Links, Metasport, Austswim, Palm Garden Resort, Banyan, Knight Frank, Blue Gecko Clothing Store, Silverwave Travel, Water Skills for Life Association, this years volunteers (Tanya Carmont, Lucy Wilson and Jenny Kaposi), John Liddbetter and to everyone who has donated time, equipment or money to the program. Your help is really appreciated by all at Swim Vietnam. Without your continued support this program would not be able to continue.