Most water-safety and drowning-prevention advocates tend to focus their efforts locally. Not Leslie Donavan. The president/CEO of Starfish Aquatics Institute, a training and safety-services organization, has been pushing to bring water-safety programs, as well as lifeguarding and aquatics education, to communities around the world.
SAI has a strong presence in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Americas and Caribbean. In fact, the organization is on every continent except Antarctica.
The organization began its international outreach programs around 1999, and Donavan became president of Starfish in 2005.
“I felt that what we had to offer as an organization was greater than what we could do in the United States,” says Donavan. “And there is such a need around the world.”
The need for adequate international water-safety programs was, indeed, great. Donavan recalls a village in Uganda that had a water well in a remote, muddy field. “It didn’t look like [it was] more than a couple of inches deep, but it dropped off into a huge hole,” says Donavan. “And people were constantly drowning because they would slip in, especially children.”
Thanks to Starfish, individuals learning to become swim instructors in the village were shown how to fashion makeshift rescue tubes to be kept near the well or any other body of water.
Starfish brings its aquatics education to its international clients in a number of ways. It has a contract with the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, a scuba training and certification firm, which offers its global membership the Starfish swim school curriculum under the PADI swim school moniker. Starfish also has been approached by large swim school operations in various countries that are in need of a modern, research-based curriculum to provide to their students and clients, says Donavan.
Starfish also works with various governments, such as Uganda’s, to provide basic water-safety messages along with swim instruction and lifeguard training, so the nations can develop its own aquatics infrastructure. And Starfish has brought its training and risk-management knowledge to some of the world’s largest waterparks.
Donavan spends a good portion of her time working with SAI’s international clientele.
The organization currently is exploring new ways to offer programs that go beyond the traditional approaches that are used in the U.S., she says. Although she’s keeping tight-lipped about details, Donavan revealed that Starfish will unveil new, innovative ways of expanding its programming in 2018. These new changes will allow more organizations, individuals and countries to take advantage of everything that Starfish has to offer, she says.
“Until there are zero drownings in every country on the planet …there will be work to do.”
