Safety Moment – Water Safety Month:
Different organizations give it different names, but when it come down to it, it’s all about aquatics safety.
♦ The Red Cross calls May Water Safety Month.
♦ The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls this week Healthy and Safe Swimming Week.
♦ The National Safe Boating Council says this week is National Safe Boating Week.
♦ At the BSA, we call it a good time to review what we’ve been doing for more than a century — helping kids safely participate in aquatic activities in line with the methods of Scouting. And it all starts with a pretty basic reminder: Wear your life jackets, people!
The United States Coast Guard estimates that 85% of boating-related drowning victims were not wearing life jackets.
“That’s how important it is to wear a life jacket,” says Terry Budd, chairman of the BSA National Aquatics Subcommittee and the 2023 National Scout Jamboree aquatics lead. “It’s like wearing a seat belt in your car. Some states don’t require you to wear them, but for everything we do in Scouting on the water, you have to wear a life jacket.”
Have a safety related question? – contact safety@ggacbsa.org