Make-A-Splash Returns
Make-A-Splash is a national child-focused water safety initiative created by the USA Swimming Foundation in 2007. The program reaches diverse and underprivileged communities by funding learn-to-swim programs for children who could not afford them otherwise.
Less than 10% of children of non-swimming African American and Hispanic families learn to swim. This disparity in U.S. swim education arose with segregation. For the greater part of the 20th century, Jim Crow laws barred the African American community from public pools, and discrimination and high costs blocked access to private swim clubs. Some racist ideology even dictated that African Americans were incapable of swimming as well as whites.
The lack of swim education in these communities has cycled through the generations. The drowning rate of African American children is three times that of white children. Today, nearly 70% of African American children and 58% of Hispanic children have minimal swimming ability, or none at all. This inability inspires a potentially fatal fear of the water in diverse families. Forty percent of Caucasian children do not swim.
Twelve years and counting, The Roeper School is proud to be a USA Swimming Foundation partner taking part in delivering this water safety/life-saving program. Roeper has been a USA Swimming Foundation grant recipient several times receiving over $20,000 to support this program which is part of the school’s operating budget. After a year of hiatus due to COVID, Roeper is pleased to offer once again its Make-A-Splash Program August 16-20. We are proud to say that this summer’s program is full.
The program is following careful COVID safety protocols to allow children to learn swimming skills in a safe and secure way.
Roeper Make-A-Splash – Program Facts
• Instituted on March 29, 2010
• Mission: to break the dangerous generational cycle of non-swimming in diverse communities
• Goal: to effect positive change through education by teaching the life-saving skill of swimming
• Committed to offering affordable swim lessons to as many children as possible in the diverse Metro-Detroit area and especially to underserved communities of African Americans/Hispanics/Latinos and other marginalized groups
• Swim lessons are offered June through August
• Children receive personalized instruction. Teacher student ratio: 1 to 6.
• Supported with funding from The Roeper School, donations, and fundraisers
• Mission: to break the dangerous generational cycle of non-swimming in diverse communities
• Goal: to effect positive change through education by teaching the life-saving skill of swimming
• Committed to offering affordable swim lessons to as many children as possible in the diverse Metro-Detroit area and especially to underserved communities of African Americans/Hispanics/Latinos and other marginalized groups
• Swim lessons are offered June through August
• Children receive personalized instruction. Teacher student ratio: 1 to 6.
• Supported with funding from The Roeper School, donations, and fundraisers
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Bloomfield Campus
Lower School and Administrative Offices
41190 Woodward Ave Bloomfield Hills MI 48304
41190 Woodward Ave Bloomfield Hills MI 48304
PHONE 248.203.7330
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Middle & Upper School
1051 Oakland Avenue Birmingham MI 48009
1051 Oakland Avenue Birmingham MI 48009
PHONE 248.203.7448
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