‘Famous Friends’ back Laurie Lawrence’s children’s water safety program

A range of high-profile Australians, sports stars and media personalities including Cathy Freeman, Kerri Pottharst, Eva Milic, Dave Hughes, Alice Murray and Mark Minichiello are lending their support to Laurie Lawrence’s Kids Alive initiative and help increase water safety education for under-fives.

The personalities have donated their time to be part of Kids Alive Storytime with Famous Friends, a social media campaign that involves the stars reading one of the Kids Alive water safety books covering safety messages for the swimming pool, beach, farm and home.

Legendary swimming coach Lawrence, who founded Kids Alive 21 years ago, said the book reads aligned with aspects of the Australian Water Safety Strategy 2030 in supporting the availability of education to at risk children under the age of four years.

Lawrence advised “we have made great strides in reducing deaths in this group over the past 10 years but deaths among children are still so high compared to other age groups.

“Once a child becomes mobile the risk jumps even further with research by RLSSA (Royal Life Saving Society - Australia) showing there are eight non-fatal drowning incidents for every death among children aged 0-4 years. It is the highest fatal to non-fatal drowning ratio of any age group.

“Kids Alive is solely focused on educating families with young ones in this age group and the Storytime with Famous Friends is another way for us to reach more people and make our message as engaging and accessible as possible. We are so thankful to all of our supporters so far that have donated their time and produced a video of themselves reading one of our books.”

Lawrence said so far ‘friends’ reading the books included Dave Hughes, Mark Minichiello, Cathy Freeman, Anna Meares, Bill Kirby, Eva Milic, Tammy Van Wisse, Alice Murray, Ben Hannant, Marianna Tolo, Pinky Neven and Melanie and Chris Wright.

Lawrence added “reading is a great way for children to learn and we hope that some familiar faces will encourage more parents to have a story session with their children and educate themselves about some potential drowning risk factors but most importantly become familiar with important water safety rules and strategies that will help protect their little ones.”

Kids Alive Storytime with Famous Friends debut on Kids Alive Facebook @kids.alive.do.the.five the third Friday of every month and can be found as replays on Kidsalive.com.au on the Kids Channel.

Kids Alive welcomes any other ‘famous friends’ who want to help educate young children on water safety through this campaign and use their influence to make a difference.

Image: Eva Milic.