Page 4074 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 30 November 2022
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I would now like to tell a story about a young man called Najeeb. In October 2020, just days before he turned 25, Najeeb Rafee was enjoying a swim at a popular swimming spot at the Cotter. Najeeb had suggested a family outing there to cool off and to take everyone’s minds off the recent death of an uncle back home in Afghanistan.
Najeeb, along with his family, had sought a better life and escaped persecution from the Taliban, fleeing Afghanistan in 2009. He and his family came to call Canberra home. So significantly did Najeeb embrace his new home that he was recognised for his community service by the ACT government in 2019.
Like many migrants to Australia, Najeeb could not swim, but he had bought floaties and a blow-up raft to help protect him in the water. But, unfortunately, at about 5 pm Najeeb fell from the raft. Najeeb’s parents and uncle, who were also unable to swim, jumped into the water and valiantly tried to save their son and nephew. His cousin left the river, driving 20 minutes back down the road, to get enough reception to be able to call 000. His other cousin stood on the road, desperately trying to flag down passers-by.
By the time the paramedics arrived, Najeeb’s father needed to be resuscitated. Najeeb was taken to hospital in a critical condition, where he stayed in intensive care for 10 days. The day he was taken off life support would have been his 25th birthday. In a cruel twist of fate, Najeeb had been booked in to begin swimming lessons the Friday after his death.
The tragic way that Najeeb died and his generous spirit, gave his loved ones an idea: a swim school, in Najeeb’s honour, to teach people like him about the water. Thus formed the genesis of the Refugee and Migrant Swim Project. This local Canberran based group, formed by four of Najeeb’s friends—Annie Gao, Clare McBride-Kelly, Andrew Nolan and Liam McBride-Kelly—decided to get together and do something tangible to help change that trend. They created the not-for-profit Refugee and Migrant Swimming Project to honour his memory. They provide free, culturally safe and trauma-informed swimming and water safety lessons to Canberra’s refugee and migrant community, because deaths by drowning are preventable with access to appropriate swimming and water safety lessons.
While swimming programs for children exist in schools, Canberra has long been the only capital city in Australia that has had a specialist swimming program for adults from refugee and migrant backgrounds. The program caters for participants with no swimming experience and is developed in partnership with the Gungahlin Leisure Centre, Royal Life Saving ACT and the Migrant and Refugee Settlement Services.
The core program centres around 10 swimming lessons delivered in the Gungahlin Leisure Centre and one water safety lesson at an outdoor waterway. English lessons are also provided before each lesson, teaching swimming and water safety related language.
The project’s founders are now calling on the ACT and federal governments to fund that program in perpetuity, as the community donations that have so far relied on will
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