John Walker Find your Field of Dreams
The John Walker Find your Field of Dreams Foundation identified that access to swimming instruction was not uniform across Auckland South. Since the transfer of operational budgets directly to school boards and the introduction of stricter requirements for school pool testing and operations, many schools have exited from their own pools and swimming programmes. There has not been a school built with a pool since 1976.
Even though school groups are offered free access to pools, especially for low socio-economic schools, the cost of arranging transport to a public pool is a significant barrier. In addition, instructor costs to support teachers who are not confident in teaching swimming also added barriers.
The Community Swim programme was developed and launched by the John Walker Foundation in 2008 to address these issues by providing FREE water skills for life lessons. This includes pool entry, transportation to and from the school and instructors at no charge to teach school children the basic yet essential skills of swimming and to be safe in and around water.
The Ted Manson Foundation was pleased to offer a donation and two 30- seater buses to the John Walker Find Your Field of Dreams Foundation to grow their current swim and sports programmes.
The provision of these vans to the John Walker Foundation will ensure a greater number of children from South Auckland are able to access the community swim programme and after school activities. We look forward to continuing this partnership in the years ahead.
