Water Safety Week for 2011 ran from November 26th – December 4th.

 

ARV had 184 facilities sign up to participate in Water Safety Week 2011 (an increase of 38 over last year’s 146 registrants). Facilities right across Victoria were involved - from Portland and Warrnambool to Bairnsdale, Leongatha and Wonthaggi, up to Wangaratta, Wodonga and across to Echuca, Mildura and Warracknabeal, to Ballarat, Bendigo and Geelong, as well as a large number of metropolitan venues. 
 

The types of activities that were run by facilities included ‘fun days’ - focusing on safety and survival skills in swimming lessons, water safety displays, colouring competitions, and other educational programs and promotions.

 

This year, in addition to the traditional process of encouraging centres across the state to participate in providing educational events and activities for local communities, ARV also designed a mass participation competition event; “What’s the BIG idea – Show us what you’re doing?”, using social media as the main driver.

 

The objective of this event was to encourage aquatic and recreation facilities and schools to take advantage of the opportunity to win some fabulous prizes by taking a photograph or video of their best water safety activity, display or message, that encourages people to always ‘Play it Safe by the Water’.

 

The announcement of the competition winners was held at the Celebration of Water Safety Week Event at Federation Square on 5 December.  The winning video clip entry for a centre was Belgrave Heated Outdoor Pool, with Isik College picking up the winner’s prize for the schools’ competition.

 

The Celebration of Water Safety Week event was well received with over a 100 people in attendance on the day plus other Fed Square spectators. Michael Klim also agreed to be the ambassador for the event, which helped lift its profile and generate crowd interest.

 

All Play it Safe by the Water agencies were invited to the celebration event, with Life Saving Victoria, Royal Life Saving, KidSafe and Surfing Victoria providing free sponsor giveaways for the general public.  In addition, mascots from Royal Life Saving, Glen Eira Sports and Aquatic Centre and ARV’s ‘Vic’, the VICSWIM Summer Kidz kickboard, provided some colour and movement to the event.  A staged ‘flashmob’ was also organised to provide an element of excitement and a celebratory.  This was also well received by the crowd.

 

We hope everyone enjoyed the week and most importantly were able to convey the water safety messages to the wider community. For some pics of the event, click here

 

Always remember to play it safe by the water!