Another sad day for children in Thailand. As the article stated, drowning is the leading cause of death for children 1 to 14. We at the Chiang Mai International Rotary Club and at the Rotary Club of Patong Beach, Phuket are addressing this problem in our local areas. For example, in Chiang Mai and Phrao we work with the municipal (tessabon) schools to give every 4th grader the opportunity to learn survival swimming and water safety in a 15-hour course, which includes 10 hours of in-pool swimming instruction by our team of professional Thai swim instructors. We use a local sport club pool and the schools transport the kids from each school to our pool for the classes. This might look like it is outrageously expensive, but we can do this for about 800 B / kid. We teach about 350 4th-graders each year in Chiang Mai and another 200 in very rural Phrao. Over the past 6 years we have taught over 4,000 kids in Thailand! It can be done!! If you know of an organization that would like to start a similar program in their community, message me here. We will be happy to provide training and lessons we have learned from our years of experience. Finally, even if you cannot take on an instructional program, you can identify drowning risk areas and report them to local leaders and encourage them to build fences, or at least post warnings, around open, dangerous water, equip local pools and swim areas with life saving equipment, hooks, life rings, CPR courses for pool staff, etc. The World Health Organization has excellent resources and guides on how to improve water safety in your community. OK, long message, but an important topic!!