Four members of the Salt Surf Lifesaving Club have been a bit of a ‘busman’s holiday’ in recent weeks.
The group have just returned from the island of Boracay in the Phillipines but this wasn’t a holiday.
They have just completed a two week training activity in children’s water safety and lifeguard training on Boracay.
The group included Cherie and Gary Raso, both instructors from Salt, along with long-time Tweed lifesavers, Richard Adams and Ben Larkin.
They joined Cudgen’s David Field, who is on a 12 month deployment with Australian Red Cross in the Philippines, in the role of lifesaving development.
Gary and Cherie recently completed a volunteer placement for SLSA in Fiji in January 2011.
“When David invited us to come over and help in Boracay we jumped at the chance,” Gary said.
For Ben, Cherie, Gary and David it was also a chance to do something in lifesaving together for the first time since they were all members of Cabarita in the early 1980s.
While for Richard Adams, the Tweed Shire Manager of Business and Economic Development, this was the second volunteer mission to South East Asia for lifesaving.
In October 2011 he was part of a training team drawn from local surf clubs that went to Phuket and Trang in Southern Thailand as part of Cudgen’s Phuket Lifeguard Club Project, underway since 2001.
As volunteers on the tourist island the Aussies felt the warmth of filipino hospitality.
“Everywhere we went we were greeted with friendship and gratitude from the locals” said Richard.
The team trained local high school students to be leaders in teaching primary age children to be water safe. While it had some elements of surf life saving’s nippers activities David has devised a whole program tailored for local conditions and swimming skills. By week’s end 12 students graduated as Red Cross junior water safety leaders side by side with the local lifeguard team of 23 who completed the senior lifeguard training.
“We donated kick boards and body boards because they really had nothing to work with besides some swim noodles and hula hoops David had purchased locally” said Ben.
