We’ve got a bit of a big update for you.
The volunteers of the club have been training hard over the last few months to become qualified as Surf Life Saving GB coaches and assistant coaches as well as setting up our club for official charity status (this is in the process of being live soon!). All of our training is going to be helping coach children in our community (and in-time, adults) how to be and feel safe in the sea, whilst also having a great time together.
Our aim has been to expand on the pool sessions we offered through the 2021 season to adding beach / sea sessions for this season, so you may have seen some of the team out on the bright yellow rescue boards or training with the rescue tubes off our beautiful beach in the past few months. They are ramping up the training now, so you’re likely to see them out on the beach over the course of the coming weeks – feel free to stop and ask any of the team what they’re up to – they’re excited to share all they’ve learnt this year so far!
As this is a new course and training for our volunteer team, we are beginning our season with further training from past participants of the club that partook in last year's activities. This is essential as we now know the ability of the children taking part (they completed the course last year) and ensures our coaches and running procedure for the club's activities are operating in the best and safest possible way to deliver sessions in and around the sea.
Past participants will be notified via text and email about taking part.
We will run these sessions for three weeks starting Saturday 11 June (one session a week) before we can assess our activities and then open up the opportunity to join the club to the wider community from July.
Because of the nature of the beach and sea environment, knowing the ability of our participants is incredibly important to ensure the safety of all participants and volunteer coaches and assistants when running the beachside sessions.
Therefore, when we open up sessions to the wider community, we will also be running “taster sessions” every Friday evening from the Saltdean Lido, which children will be able to book onto throughout the Lido open season. Details of these will be made available as soon as possible and we will be working with community groups to get as many children as possible to try these amazing sessions. All children taking part in future sea sessions will be required to have a swimming assessment in the pool, to ensure they are able to partake safely in sea sessions. We will update on details of these trial and assessment sessions as soon as we can.
If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to let us know! Thank you all for the support so far and to our volunteer team, without whom, this wouldn’t be possible.
Thank you