The Truth

"Drowning is the 3rd leading cause of unintentional injury death worldwide, accounting for 7% of all injury-related deaths".
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs347/en/
Drowning remains the leading cause of accidental death in children 1-4 in Florida, the top 5 in the nation. (CDC Stats)  In Florida alone, enough children have drowned in the past 5 years to fill half of an elementary school.  This is incredibly tragic, impacting families, first responders, hospital staff, on and on until there's barely no one left in a community who doesn't bear the scars of the impact drowning can have.
Each person is impacted differently, each person reacts differently.  Unfortunately, its not uncommon for families, who are already dealing with shock, unimaginable loss/grief, etc. to then be thrown another round of incredible negativity in the form of judgement/blame from outsiders.  Sometimes, it can even be from what would be considered "insiders".  

This negativity/pain has led to many of these families seeking refuge in avoiding the world of water safety - a place where their voice and insight could touch others and save lives.  There is power in numbers as each life impacted/lost speaks volumes to the need in improvement in water safety at so many levels.
(Improvements that don't include inflicting additional punishment on families who are already living with the worst pain anyone could face).  
Truthfully, the only way we could 100% prevent drownings is to remove every drop of water from the world.  Obviously, that's absurd and as a result, drownings will never be 100% preventable, so we're left with stacking up layers of prevention and  advocating for improvements to help reduce the risk of drowning.  

Drowning impacts and crosses the lines of every ethnicity, age and income level.  No one is immune, even the children of the most perfect parents/caregivers could very well be impacted.  Drownings will exist as long as human error exists - but we can all do A LOT to reduce these numbers and that begins with understanding how often and how easily they can happen to the most safety vigilant of persons.

Add a name of a drowning victim (fatal or non-fatal) to our wall of loved ones. 

    Wall of Loved Ones
    *Use Name of Loved One, in the comment section you can include date of birth and/or date of accident/loss.  If you would like to share a picture, send us an e-mail at [email protected]. 
Picture
Sending love and honoring lives lost to drowning at the Annual AGH Scholarship Awarding Event. Lakeland, FL June 6, 2015

Additional Support

Contact us if you need further support and are in need of resources.   *If you have resources you would like to offer these families, (website links for information, awareness of events, etc.) Please let us know and we'll add them to our resource section of this growing page or privately disperse upon request.


[email protected]