In August we begin to say goodbye to summer (say it aint so!) and refocus priorities for the coming seasonal change. In August, you celebrated a big birthday with me. You also anchored in to form the new WaterStrong Red Cross CPR Instructor Cohort.

Nana, Shelby, Andy, Teresa-Marie, Denise, Habiba, Nargis, Samia, Marzia, Brooke, and Jazanna will join Naomi, Cassy, Chelsea, Tim and John as Certified Red Cross Instructors, qualified to deliver the Adult & Pediatric Basic First Aid / CPR / AED trainings to communities WaterStrong serves. WELCOME! And THANK YOU to Jeff State for so skillfully delivering the instructor cert training, and to Tatyana Kiselov for facilitating our training connections. WELCOME Nana & Shelby as the WaterStrong training coordinators who will lead the buildout of our new core safety trainings. 

THANK YOU to Women’s Foundation of Oregon and to Elevate Oregon for the generous grants to support this critical capacity building in our communities.

You returned to Northeast Community Center with our Afghan refugee ladies from Pacific Refugee Support Group, every water entry more confident and open. We have a few new budding dolphins and mermaids in the group and soon, a few of them will become certified Red Cross First Aid / CPR instructors. Also in July we hosted a partner tent at Cathedral Park Portland Bridge Swim, sharing unapologetic admiration for the swimmers who train so hard for the challenging 11-mile swim, and raising awareness for a cleaner Willamette River. At Broughton Beach on the Columbia River you distributed over 120 free lifejackets to families recreating on a Sunday afternoon, delighted for the little life savers that would be their ticket to getting in the water. With your help, Metro reached its goal of distributing over 4,000 lifejackets to Portland metro families this year. Great job!

July is significant for other reasons. July is National Drowning Prevention Month. In Oregon, July tragically bookended 21 drowning fatalities including celebrity chef Naomi Pomeroy whose paddleboard leash failed to release from a tree snag on the Willamette River and Vielman Mijail De La Cruz-Lopez who failed to surface after jumping off a fishing dock at Boat Ramp C at Hagg Lake. Every drowning death is preventable, and please know you are making a difference. WaterStrong took seed when my heart sank, learning of the Garcia-Ixtacua family 3 generations loss at Hagg Lake in 2014. We will be part of the solution, and you are making it happen one lifejacket, one lesson at a time.