Senior Swimmers Share Skills With Los Niños Primero

Five outstanding Mount Vernon seniors committed their time to teach swimming lessons to students enrolled in Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church’s Los Niños Primero academic program.
Los Niños Primero is a non-profit organization that prepares underserved Latino preschool children for educational success by providing opportunities to develop their language, cognitive, social, and motor skills.
Recently, the five young men met with their Executive Director, Maritza Morelli to discuss the specifics of their proposal. 24 hours later, the swim program was completely filled by children eager to learn.
Director Morelli shares, “We are indebted to these community-minded students who have generously volunteered to teach a critically important life skill to the children of Los Niños Primero. In their program proposal, the MVPS volunteers quoted this compelling statistic: ‘According the CDC, Latino and African American children are three times more likely to drown than that of their white counterparts. Of Latino children in the US, 60% never learn how to swim while a few swim lessons between ages 1 and 4 has been shown to reduce the risk of drowning by 88%.'”
Thanks goes to James McGuire, AJ Whitney, Steven Butz, Connor Hughes and Chris Smith for this extraordinary gift as they skillfully built confidence in the first-time swimmers. Easing the students into the water, they ensured comfort and minimized stress.
Learning to swim is an essential skill and the earlier the fear of swimming is conquered, the better.