Om Swastiastu,
It’s less than two months away from the end of 2022. Through November this year, Swimdo has taught over 1,300 students this year. Hopefully by the end of the year we will reach our target to teach 1,500 students. Our class in Gianyar covers two districts as we have taught all of the students in the area and have thus needed to expand our reach. As we grow our main classes in Keramas and Ubud, we are looking at the possibilities to move to new pools and to provide transportation for students that live far away but still want to learn survival swimming. **
Our newest program in the Singaraja district is successfully running five times a week. Swimdo is currently working with the department of education to make sure we cover all the students in elementary schools around the area. It has become clear that local government support is essential for our operation and has thus given us the new direction for Swimdo expansion to other regencies around Indonesia. At the moment, we plan to open two more Swimdo classes in Singaraja. Our team has scouted the location for the new classes and has found ideal local public pools run by the village and local government of Singaraja. We plan to have our new pool ready for the pilot class in December and a fully running location by March next year.
Our first pool will be located in the Seririt District, in the Bubunan village. Seririt district is located 21 Km to the west from Singaraja city. There are 50 elementary schools in 20 villages with more than 7,200 students in the Seririt district, so we will have a large “pool” of students to teach. In addition, we have identified some new potential local instructors for the Seririt class. They are all locals from the village around the Seririt area and are very enthusiastic to start the extensive training program that is required for all new Swimdo teachers. Our success working with the local government in Singaraja will help to create pathways on our approach to start Swimdo programs in different regencies throughout Indonesia.
We plan to continue to expand our Swimdo programs throughout the Badung regency as well. The Badung regency is the second most populated regency in Bali with thousands of eligible students that will be able to participate in our survival swimming and water safety program. In other news, we recently had Patagonia on site to come film our classes and do interviews with our local coordinators.
We are very excited to begin this relationship and potential sponsorship with them. More to come on that very soon! As always, thank you to all of our incredible donors that make all of this possible. We rely on your continued support and appreciate you more than you know!
-Indira Santi, Director-Bali