End Drownings: Gift Water-Safety Swim Lessons!

Thank you, in advance, for your life-saving donations, which can be made through PayPal, Venmo: @JAARProgram, and/or this GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/b1c7fc6e.

Update 9/30/23: Thank you for your donations! We are already teaching our fourth consecutive session of 12 free water-safety swim lessons that come with free competitive bathing suits, caps, goggles, ear plugs, and nose plugs for all our participants. By October 27th, we will have taught 20 children crucial water-safety swim skills with a goal to reach 6 more prior to the winter holidays.

As a donation-based program, we are counting on help from you(!), the public, to maintain the ability to teach free lessons that come with free equipment, while applying for grants and working to partner with local businesses. JAAR Program will begin its 5th round of lessons starting the week of October 30th. For the first time since we began, our program has OPEN SPACES in the next session for more participants; however, we can only continue as a free program with monetary support from the public.

*Please keep in mind that it costs the JAAR Team between $200-$300 to teach each child who goes through our program. We know that is not an affordable amount for all families, but every size donation makes a difference. The money goes straight to our participants, their lessons, and their equipment. For those who wonder about the cost, please read more below:

The next closest program, in terms of pricing, offers 12 private half-hour swimming lessons for either $300 or $360. Those prices are set as thirty minutes of instruction (times twelve). They do not include, nor do they offer, transition time in a hot tub, any personal equipment, or an instructor who is guaranteed to have experience working with a vast array of children within the disability community.

We appreciate your valuable time and are grateful that you read about JAAR Program. Please feel free to learn more about us by visiting our website at: https://jaarprogram.org/.

Thank you, in advance, for your donation!

*Strong bodies. Fit minds. Happy futures.*

As the founder of JAAR Program, ensuring that we have enough funds to continue teaching water-safety swim skills to children who are neurodiverse, is never far from my mind. What began as a passion project, when a child I knew tragically drowned in their backyard, has become a much bigger program that focuses on increasing both physical health and mental well-being of participants. The more children we teach, the more I realize that Eugene has a large community of people who experience neurodiversity; yet there are very few opportunities for them to freely participate in extracurricular activities. We simply do not have enough programs that focus on equity.

I grew up with a mentor, Jerry Adams, who did everything in his power to not only teach us to be good swimmers, but also to be good people. He threw us New Year's Eve parties in his own “bachelor pad” to keep us from drinking and read us books at swim meets to keep us from flipping through magazines with impossible beauty standards. I hope to be a little more like Jerry (and Ted Lasso) each day and to recreate that same loving and nurturing environment for children in Eugene.

As I look forward with JAAR Program, I see us increasing the size and number of lessons available. I want us to throw events that would otherwise not be readily available for our participants: New Year’s Eve parties, proms, game nights. I hope we can form a swim team and help teach parents how to swim too, such that we put a stop to intergenerational water trauma.

Most of all, the JAAR team has recognized that it is past time for all drownings to end. Drowning is the second leading cause of death among children ages 1-14 years old: why? It is a statistic we, the public, can control by demanding access to needed water-safety instruction. Drownings are preventable deaths because swimming is not a privilege, but a life skill. Please support our mission to end drowning while increasing mental fitness by assisting us in providing children, who are in vulnerable populations, with life-saving water-safety lessons.

Thank you, in advance, for your life-saving donations, which can be made through PayPal, Venmo: @JAARProgram, and/or this GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/b1c7fc6e.