Subiaco Scouts strive for their Water Safety Badge

Swimming and water safety skills are vital for all children and young people in Western Australia, enabling them to take part in our water-activity loving lifestyle. Royal Life Saving Society WA has long been working to ensure all children have access to opportunities to learn these skills, and enjoys partnering with like-minded organisations who prepare our young people for a healthy, active lifestyle. The Scouts are one such organization.

The Scouts have a long history of teaching children important life skills, with water safety being one of these, and recently the 1st Subiaco Scout Troop took part in a session to gain their Water Safety badge at HBF Stadium in Mount Claremont. 31 Scouts aged between 11 and 15 were involved in the session, run by 4 Scout Troop Leaders.

Royal Life Saving Society WA’s Workforce Solutions department was approached by the Scouts to assist by providing 20 lifejackets for the exercise, as participants were learning the skills of survival swimming, survival positions, water hazards present in pool, river, lake and ocean environments, and correct use of safety equipment. 

Over the past 12 months Royal Life Saving Society WA’s Old4New lifejacket exchange program has been encouraging boaters to exchange their old style lifejackets for new slimline versions that are much more likely to be used rather than simply being stored in the hull of their boat. As a result we’ve collected a large number of lifejackets, many never or barely used, and have been looking for opportunities to use these for training purposes.

The provision of these lifejackets made a big impact to the Scouts training event, providing some fun, but educational activities for participants, and not only enforcing the importance of lifejackets for water activities, but ensuring they were trained in their correct use. Scout leaders were also able to use the evening to gain an assessment of the swimming ability of the Scouts involved ahead of upcoming camps in which water activities are a popular feature.

Royal Life Saving Society WA is proud to have been able to assist the Scouts, and looks forward to partnering with more community organisations who provide or take part in water activities with their members and participants. We would encourage organisations who could make use of the exchanged lifejackets from our Old4New program to contact us for more information.