Many children in Cologne cannot swim. There are many non-swimmers, especially in deprived areas. That should change now: with floating containers.
Cologne – 152,000 students in North Rhine-Westphalia cannot swim. There is also a real swimming dilemma in Cologne. This is mainly due to the fact that four out of nine Cologne training pools are currently closed. “From my point of view, that is completely unacceptable and I will not accept it like that,” says Oliver Seeck, SPD member of Cologne City Council and chairman of the sports committee. A new project by Martin Becker, founder of the private swimming school Sharky am Schloss, and Frank Rabe, Secretary General of the NRW Swimming Association, should help. The plan: learn to swim in the container.
24RHEIN shows how children should learn to swim in a container.
The swimming containers with an eight-meter-long pool enable children to get used to the water and learn the basic skills of swimming – directly in the primary school’s playground. Especially in social hotspots, children should have access to swimming again. “It shouldn’t be the claim that only children who also play golf learn to swim,” emphasizes Becker. (jw)
