Adult Learn to Swim (ALTS)

Headline about ALT

The Minnesota Masters Swimming Adult Learn-to-Swim (ALTS) program’s goal is to make adults in Minnesota safer in water. If a parent does not know how to swim, there is only a 19% chance that a child in their household will learn how to swim. We seek to break this cycle by hosting events that offer free swim lessons to adults.

Our lessons are designed to serve adults with little or no swimming experience, either due to lack of access to pools or fear of water, but we encourage adults of any experience level to participate. In parallel, our program provides a pipeline for volunteers to gain training and experience in teaching adults to swim. One of our unique elements has been to provide women-only programs in pools with privacy so that women desiring or requiring an environment without men can participate.

Our organization has many swimmers that enjoy volunteering to help teach ALTS lessons, but we need partners, both facility owners/operators for access to pools and community organizations throughout the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area to help find and organize participants as well as to help find volunteers. We have partnered with The Blake School to provide annual programs at the Blake pool in Hopkins. We have partnered with Minneapolis Public Schools Community Education to provide programs to families in Minneapolis. We have partnered with Hopkins Community Education and are starting our first year-round women-only swim team.