Swimming Program

The Fiona Stevenson Memorial Fund was set up by the family and friends of Fiona Stevenson, who tragically died in the London bombings on July 7 2005. Fiona was a talented lawyer who spent 4 months in early 2005 as a volunteer in Belize working with the Human Services department to develop a staff manual and train social workers to present their cases to the Belize courts.

Fiona was very conscious of the difficulties that many children in Belize face in developing their life skills and was concerned by the number of drownings that occur due to children not learning to swim. Therefore, Fiona’s family and friends, along with the Belize YWCA.

and Liberty Foundation set about using the funds raised in Fiona’s memory to develop a program to provide swimming lessons for disadvantaged school children, along with water safety classes for their teachers.

The lessons began in February 2007 for 60 pupils in 5 primary schools across Belize City, with 9 of their teachers attending water safety classes. At the outset around 75% of the children were scared of the water or had no swimming skills whatsoever and now every single one can float on their front and back while many are already working in the deep end.