City Announces Junior Lifeguard Programs For Fall Break

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City Announces Junior Lifeguard Programs For Fall Break
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City Announces Junior Lifeguard Programs for Fall Break

HONOLULU– Mayor Rick Blangiardi announced today for the first time, Honolulu Ocean Safety will hold a Fall Junior Lifeguards Program during the week of October 9th-13th, with the goal of sharing near shore rescue techniques and life-saving skills for keiki ages 11-17. The free program will feature one-day sessions at five locations around O`ahu.
“This great program is so important for our community,” said Mayor Rick Blangiardi. “Our Junior Lifeguard Program is a great way for some of the best lifeguards in the world to share their knowledge and skills with our island’s youth. Our city lifeguards tell me that for every child they teach, that child turns around and shares the technique with 10 others, including friends, families, and neighbors. That kind of broad outreach results in education and awareness of the risks and hazards around our shoreline, and helps improve public safety in a general sense at all of our beach parks.”
City lifeguards will teach rescue board, rescue tube, and near shore search and rescue techniques and also provide an orientation to cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and basic first aid. Each session will run from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Parents can use an online sign-up page to register their children: https://emergencyservices.honolulu.gov/ocean-safety-lifeguard-services/junior-lifeguards. Parents are asked to sign their children up for only one of the five sessions, so that as many youths as possible can participate. Ocean Safety has worked with the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation to stage the one-day events at:
-          Kualoa Beach Park (Monday, Oct. 9)
-          "Sherwoods" -- Hūnānaniho, or Waimānalo Bay Beach Park (Tuesday, Oct. 10)
-          Pōkaʻī Bay Beach Park (Wednesday, Oct. 11)
-          Kaimana Beach (Thursday, Oct. 12)
-          Kailua Beach Park (Friday, Oct. 13)
In 2022, the City and County of Honolulu re-started the Junior Lifeguard Program, and since then, nearly 2,000 youth participated in the program. The one-week sessions, at six different beach parks this past summer, before hosting an island championship at Mākaha, followed by a state Junior Lifeguards Leadership Challenge last month as part of the “DukeFest” in Waikīkī.
Almost a quarter of the 287 lifeguards employed at Honolulu Ocean Safety were once Junior Lifeguards themselves, and the program is meaningful in a variety of ways. “Our Junior Lifeguard Program is important as a recruiting tool, as a way of educating young beachgoers on life-saving skills, and in simply promoting good stewardship of the shoreline,” says Honolulu Chief of Ocean Safety John Titchen. “We truly believe as lifeguards that this program saves lives. Even if just one of our keiki comes away with the confidence to help someone in an ocean emergency, we have succeeded.”
—PAU—

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First Friday Hawaii News Item

City Announces Junior Lifeguard Programs For Fall Break

First Friday Hawaii
News Item