With everything that’s been going on around the country over the past few weeks, people are doing their part by supporting Black business owners and a group of U.S. swimmers has teamed up to launch Swimmers for Change, an initiative that hosts webinars to raise funds for charities supporting Black communities.
The initiative was founded by Olympic swimmers Lia Neal and Jacob Pebley, and 30 Olympians, Paralympics, and National Team swimmers aim to educate others about the importance of Black Lives Matter. The swimmers started hosting live-streams on June 15 and they’ll continue until June 26. They’re free to sign up for, but you’re encouraged to support the featured charities. Each live-stream focuses on a different topic like June 19 is about “Life after swimming, college recruitment/life balance to benefit NAACP and the Equal Justice Initiative” and June 25 is “All things breaststroke and nutrition to benefit NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.”
Olympic gold medalist Nathan Adrian and silver and bronze Olympic medalist Elizabeth Beisel are part of the lineup.
The swimmers also hope to draw attention to the systemic racism that occurs in their sport, “Due to a number of historical events, including the segregation of pools and limitation of Black swimmers, swimming, like society, fostered systemic racism,” reads a letter USA Swimming released to it’s members. “While swimming has come a long way, we acknowledge that our progress has been much too slow. There is still much work to be done and it will take continued awareness, advocacy, and hard work in all our communities.”
