From Fear to Freedom
 

When I was six years old, I nearly drowned in a rip current with my grandfather. It was a terrifying experience that stayed with me as I grew older. I eventually realized that what happened to me was not an isolated incident. Florida has the highest childhood drowning fatality rates in the US, with its many lakes, ponds, pools, and 1,350-mile coastline. No place in Florida is more than 60 miles from water. Under-resourced and autistic children can face greater barriers to accessing formal swim lessons and water safety education.
 

As soon as I was old enough, I wanted to help other children avoid experiencing what I had experienced. I reached out to the YMCA and American Red Cross to get trained, and then began volunteering with local community groups to teach under-resourced children how to swim and stay safe around water. Over the past four years, I have personally taught 98 children. The moment I saw a child who had once been afraid of the water confidently swim across the deep end, I knew I was making a difference. But I also realized that I could reach many more children if I found a way to multiply my efforts.
 

I began focusing on partnerships and youth leadership. I established partnerships with the YMCA and began working with Boys & Girls Clubs of Florida to bring water safety education into after-school and summer camp programs. I also realized that other young people could become water safety leaders themselves. Instead of simply volunteering more of my own time, I could train other youth to teach alongside me. I have now trained 45 youth volunteers, and together we have taught water safety to more than 500 children and counting.

What started in North Florida has expanded to Orlando and Tampa, and we recently opened a school club at CrossRoads School in Los Angeles. Ten youth volunteers in California are now teaching water safety through YMCA after-school programs, extending our YMCA partnership beyond Florida. Seeing young people take ownership of this mission has shown me that civic leadership is not about doing everything yourself. It is about empowering others to become part of the solution.
 

I founded Safe Swimmers Project to formalize the initiative and create a structure that could grow beyond my own volunteer efforts. I began raising funds to hire certified instructors and received grants from organizations including Youth Service America/AmeriCorps, the Pollination Project, Publix, and Target. So far, we have raised nearly $4,000 to support our work.
 

As I volunteered alongside YMCA swim instructors, I noticed another problem: Florida's swim voucher program ended its age eligibility just as many under-resourced children were reaching the age when they could benefit most from learning to swim. I realized that teaching children one at a time would not be enough. We also needed to address the policy barrier preventing many children from accessing lessons in the first place.

I reached out to the North Florida aquatics director for the YMCA, pediatric emergency room doctors at Nemours Children's Hospital in Jacksonville, and the Autism Society of Florida. Together, we built a coalition of people with expertise in swimming, child drowning prevention, medicine, and autism. We then brought that expertise to Florida lawmakers and advocated for expanding access to swim instruction for under-resourced elementary school children through age seven.
 

My Florida representative and senator filed bills to make that change. The legislation became a top-10 legislative priority for Florida TaxWatch and received unanimous votes in every committee and on the final House and Senate floors. Governor DeSantis signed the drowning prevention legislation, which went into effect on July 1. So far, 1,000 children have signed up for these swim lessons.
 

I also hosted a sign-up celebration with the YMCA in North Florida, where we enrolled more than 60 children and recruited more than 100 youth volunteers. We plan to replicate these events through YMCAs across Florida. The Florida House of Representatives has also honored me with an official State of Florida tribute plaque for this work.
 

A personal near-drowning became a mission to make children safer. That mission became a network of young volunteers, community partnerships, and eventually a statewide effort to change policy. I learned that young people do not have to wait to create meaningful civic change. We can identify problems, bring people together, and turn our own experiences into action that reaches far beyond ourselves.
 

Thank you very much for your support!
 

Will Moffett, Founder