Water safety promoted at Diwali Mela Festival
Over the weekend just gone Royal Life Saving Society WA staff and volunteers attended the Diwali Mela Festival 2017 at Claremont Showgrounds, promoting the swimming & water safety message to culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) communities. Diwali Mela (the festival of lights) is one of the biggest carnivals for Perth’s Indian community, with food and market stalls, rides, cultural performances and fireworks and is celebrated by the Indian Society of WA in collaboration with 36 different Indian origin organisations and dancing schools.
Royal Life Saving’s Access & Equity team works with key community groups, including the Indian Society of WA, to run programs that promote the swimming & water safety message amongst the CaLD population. It is evident that drowning data is a lot higher with these community groups than the average population. Alarmingly, in a recent five year period there have been 50 drowning deaths in WA involving members of the CaLD community, which makes up 37% of all drowning deaths.
Our team’s stall at Diwali Mela was focused on sharing information about our swimming and water safety programs with those who attended. To encourage community participation at our stall we held a lucky dip, where visitors could win fluffy ducks, key rings, colouring books and more. This was a big hit with the kids and led to 148 parents expressing an interest in getting their children involved in swimming and water safety classes - a very encouraging result!
Royal Life Saving Society WA would like to thank the Indian Society of WA for allowing us to hold a stall at the festival, promoting our message. We’d also like to thank the volunteers who assisted us across the weekend, Renad and Rebal - as current participants in our Women’s Only Swimming Program they did a great job of encouraging other women to get involved as they could share their own personal experience. A big thank you also to Royal Life Saving subcontractors Liv & Jade Mickle for ensuring the stall ran successfully.
We look forward to seeing those who visited our stall across the weekend get involved in our multicultural swimming and water safety programs throughout the year!