Child Safety Source Episode 40 - Kari Bahour

Child Safety Source

Kari Bahour became a water safety and drowning prevention advocate after her 16 month old son experienced a non-fatal drowning incident at a friend's pool 19 years ago. Despite the proper pool barriers and 3 adults in the home, her infant son managed to briefly escape adult supervision ending up in a cold pool floating face down and unconscious. Thankfully her son survived without complications but Kari was well aware her son's situation could have ended in tragedy. After doing her own research on swim programs, Kari enrolled her 16 month old son in a 6 week infant self-rescue swim program. Amazed at the aquatic problem solving skills her son learned, she passionately pursued becoming a survival swimming instructor to provide these essential lifesaving skills to more children.

Since 2000, she has had the privilege and honor of teaching aquatic self-rescue swimming skills to thousands of infants and young children. In 2008, Kari underwent additional extensive training to where she became qualified to train and mentor other instructors in the self-rescue methodology. Kari has trained instructors in Florida, Louisiana, Montana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Illinois, Texas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Delaware.

Drowning prevention and water safety became Kari's passion. She fiercely pursued many other avenues where she can make a difference and bring awareness to the pediatric drowning epidemic.

Unfortunately tragedy struck again and Kari realized her efforts were just not enough. On Mother's Day weekend in 2014, four pediatric drownings in a single weekend occurred in the Tampa Bay Area. To Kari, this was was unacceptable and she knew more had to be done to prevent these tragedies from occurring. In 2014, she founded Water Smart Tots.

Water Smart Tots, Inc. is a 501(C)3 nonprofit corporation dedicated to eliminating pediatric drowning in the Greater Tampa Bay Area by promoting awareness through water safety education and by providing scholarships for one-on-one survival swimming skills to children ages 12 months to 6 years who are financially underprivileged, or who have special needs. She wanted to give back to her community, and believed that every child deserves the opportunity to learn survival swimming skills regardless of financial hardship or special need.

A list of honors and awards for Water Smart Tots can be found here: http://www.watersmarttots.org/honors-aw…

To date, more than 2000 preschoolers have been educated about water safety through our complimentary preschool water safety presentations. More than 300 children have received specialized one-on-one survival swimming lessons in the Tampa Bay Area.