WOW! I am still buzzing here, and it is well past midnight.
So, take a group of eight Lebanese people who are all tired from a busy day at work – some from the Red Cross, some from a swimming teaching background, and introduce them to the RLSS UK Survive & Save Instructor programme, and what do you get? THE most animated, engaged, and thoughtful discussion around the delivery of lifesaving training I have ever had in three languages simultaneously.
It was really awesome to simply light the blue touch paper and stand back. These guys didn’t need teaching, they just got their teeth into the resources, took it all apart, figured out how to make it work in Beirut and put it back together again. I mainly sat and drank coffee, oh and chucked in the odd awkward question.
Tomorrow is the meat of the course – all the fun stuff, actually getting hands on in the CPR & First Aid, getting into the water and getting on with surviving & saving. Thursday is prepping & planning for the big day, then on Friday the first 18 kids arrive.
To me, this speaks volumes about two things – firstly the super high levels of motivation of these aspiring lifesaving instructors, and secondly how well put together the RLSS Survive & Save programme is. We had some awesome discussions about risk management and how a solid risk assessment underpins a comprehensive management plan, which then allows the instructors great freedom to deliver the training in innovative and interactive ways – because they have considered the health and safety of students, and have planned how to manage that effectively. (OK, I recognise not everyone thinks this stuff is awesome, but I do)
The challenge we now have is how to take these crazy balls of lifesaving energy, and expose them to 36 excited kids (honestly, the amount of phone calls I have heard today – I think we could have had 60 kids!) and hopefully not blow the roof of the swimming pool with the energy!