Project

We are delighted to return to Peru for SwimTayka’s 6th programme of positive change. Try something different and join us as a volunteer. You will play a key role in delivering the SwimTayka water safety and water stewardship method in Huanchaco, Peru.

This already successful programme runs for two to six weeks during the year’s first two months. You will work closely with our NGO partners, local volunteers, environmental educators and surfers during the local children’s summer holiday season.

Our partner organization, Otra Cosa Network, runs a year-round volunteer programme serving the needs of women and children living in Huanchaco and surrounding shantytowns. Their HELP programs improve literacy, environmental education, sports, and girl empowerment.  Another partner is Boqueron Surf School, one of many surf schools in Huanchaco with the unique mission to teach the poorest children surfing as a life skill.

Join us as a volunteer if you have experience working with children, and have some knowledge of Peruvian culture and Spanish language skills (essential for effective communication in Huanchaco). Volunteers work independently, relying heavily on teamwork and creativity, with some coordination and leadership from the staff at OCN and Boqueron Surf School.

Register your interest

Peru: Register your Interest!

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What You Will Be Doing

  • As a SwimTayka volunteer, you will deliver the SwimTayka Method youth education program in Drowning Prevention and Water Stewardship.  The programme is a hands-on, youth education module for children ages 4 – 14, to teach basic swimming skills, water safety, principles of environmental education, and tools for water stewardship.
  • In preparation for the project launch, you will work closely with SwimTayka leadership in developing the Curriculum, allowing flexibility to make adjustments as needed.
  • In general, your work schedule will run weekdays during working hours.  Weekends and evenings are free for you to explore your stunning surroundings:
    • Four mornings a week, roughly 9 am – 1 pm. One day a week may be reserved for planned field trips.
    • Volunteers will accompany the participants to and from the training location (a local pool or swimming area), provide dry-land instruction and in-water lessons, and ensure safety for all participants at all times.
    • The general structure of the day maybe 45 minutes of travel time, 1-hour water drowning prevention, 1-hour environmental education, 45 minutes travel time.

Requirements

  • You must be at least 18 years old at the start of the programme
  • You must have experience as a youth swim instructor or familiarity with environmental education principles.
  • Familiarity with Peruvian culture and institutions is a big plus.  Spanish language skills required.
  • You must submit a completed volunteer application and agree to a criminal background check.

SwimTayka Project Fundraising Overview:

Each volunteer is required to raise a target donation amount in order to join a SwimTayka programme. We carefully calculate all projected costs for each unique project and then provide volunteers with a fundraising target that covers most in-country expenses, while excluding any airfare costs.

What is Included in the SwimTayka Fundraising Target:

  • Accommodation for the entire duration of the project
  • All required in-country ground transportation from arrival to departure
  • The full SwimTayka programme uniform
  • Donations of equipment and supplies to local partners
  • A contribution to SwimTayka administrative costs

What is NOT Included in the Fundraising Target:

  • All international and domestic airfare to, from and within the project country
  • Recommended traveller’s insurance to cover illness, injury, or emergency evacuation
  • Any necessary visa application fees, which vary by nationality
  • Optional extended personal leisure travel before/after the project

In summary, volunteers must pay for international flights, visas, insurance and any extra travel themselves, on top of meeting the SwimTayka fundraising target which covers in-country expenses. Meeting the target ensures we can deliver our programmes while keeping costs low for our local partners.

Peru

This excellent description of the beautiful history and uniqueness of Huanchaco, dually recognized as a world surfing reserve and world fishing reserve

 

The summer swimming program has been running since 2017, and SwimTayka are supporting the project to expand and reach more children, and train more local instructors to teach drowning prevention and the life skills in swimming. SwimTayka provides free swimming lessons and drowning prevention education to children in underprivileged communities, who live along the open waters of La Libertad Province in Peru. In addition, we have been educating the community’s teens on how to be swim instructors in future years to their younger peers. Teaching them lifesaving skills as well as creating new employment opportunities for them.

Alongside swimming lessons, this program also offers an environmental course for the children involved. These classes are focused on understanding global climate change, how to prevent pollution – especially of bodies of water, as well as they get to learn what is understood by reusing and recycling common house litter. At the end of these lessons, children have to present a final project, a product of their own imagination made of reused and recycled materials.