We believe that learning to swim is a life skill, not a privilege. Swimming builds confidence, self-reliance, and safety, and our goal is to make instruction a standard part of every child’s education, yet access to lessons is often limited in low-income communities.
Building on more than a decade of work that began with the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation’s Swim for Life initiative, the Foundation supports public-private partnerships that deliver high-quality, school-day swim instruction at scale. By helping schools, community organizations, and public agencies coordinate resources, we aim to create sustainable models that ensure all children gain the skills to be safe and confident around water. Consistent with our venture philanthropy approach we also seek to ensure that our funding leads to support from public sources. As noted below our support of District 4 swim initiatives has led to $1.5 million in New York City funding through the Speaker’s Initiative, replacing initial philanthropic seed support and demonstrating how strategic early investment can catalyze sustained public support for school-day swim instruction.
Current efforts we are supporting in this category include:
1. Staten Island Coordinated Approach: We are supporting two initiatives that collectively serve 1200+ second graders in the poorest areas of Staten Island. The first is a collaborative effort between the YMCA of Greater New York, JCC of Staten Island, and NYC Parks Department. This partnership brings together organizations with strong community roots and established swim programs to deliver 8–10 weeks of in-school lessons for 840 students across 17 elementary schools located in poorer areas of Staten Island. Building on this borough-based approach, the Foundation is also supporting Asphalt Green to expand access on Staten Island by delivering swim instruction to an additional 360 second graders across 4–5 elementary schools, using the pool at the College of Staten Island.
Each partner uses an evidence-based curriculum and shared assessment framework to track skill development, while transportation and coordination are handled in collaboration with schools. By focusing on one borough and aligning multiple providers under a common framework, the initiative offers a practical demonstration of how coordinated delivery can overcome barriers to access.
2. Community School District Saturation: With our support, Asphalt Green is reaching district-wide saturation of free, school-day swim instruction for second graders in Manhattan’s Community School District 4 (East Harlem). Through its Wave Makers program, Asphalt Green already serves most public elementary schools in the district. Our funding is enabling the organization to reach every remaining school, ensuring that all District 4 students have the opportunity to learn to swim as part of their school day.
This achievement provides a rare example of full, district-level implementation, showing that universal swim access within a public-school system is both feasible and effective when supported by strong local leadership and coordination. Following two years of piloting, Waver Makers has secured $1.5 million in New York City funding through the Speaker’s Initiative, replacing its initial philanthropic seed support and demonstrating how strategic early investment can catalyze sustained public support for school-day swim instruction.
3. Northern Manhattan: We are also supporting Asphalt Green to replicate this model of leveraging underutilized pools that can be reactivated to serve local students during the school day, to another neighborhood in Northern Manhattan. As part of this strategy, Asphalt Green will deliver swim instruction to approximately 475 second graders across Hamilton Heights, Washington Heights and Inwood at underused pools within a local high school campus. This approach mirrors the East Harlem model by pairing school-day instruction with existing community resources, offering a scalable pathway to expand district-level access in additional neighborhoods.
4. Zero Drowning Initiative: In Miami-Dade County, the Foundation is supporting the Zero Drowning Initiative, a county-wide collaboration led by The Miami Foundation to eliminate childhood drowning deaths – the leading cause of accidental death for children under 14 in the region. The initiative provides free, American Red Cross-certified swim instruction and multilingual water-safety education to preschool and kindergarten students, with a goal of reaching 20,000 children annually.
The program is embedded into the school day, with free transportation and robust family engagement. Its comprehensive evaluation system tracks skill gains and program fidelity, coordinated by public partners including Miami-Dade County, The Children’s Trust, and the newly established Office of Drowning Prevention.