One New Yorker teaches thousands of people how to swim, one stroke at a time.
Paulana Lamonier, 33, is a York College alumna and founder of Black People Will Swim, a swim program that aims to dispel the stereotype that Black people cannot swim.
“It started as a passion project of mine. I started in 2019, wanting to teach 30 people how to swim,” she said. Lamonier said the name of her swim program is a call to action. “This is a mission reminding people that Black people deserve the right to know and learn how to swim, and so I just stuck with it since,” she said.
According to a 2017 national study conducted by the U.S. Swimming Foundation and the University of Memphis, 64% of African-American children, 45% of Hispanic children and 40% of Caucasian children have little to no swimming ability. The disproportionate amount of Black people unable to swim is linked to many cultural and historical factors, including institutionalized racism with the historical exclusion of Black people from public swimming pools, the privatization of swimming lessons, lack of representation in professional swim sports and the fear of drowning.
Lamonier said she learned how to swim as a child after her parents put her and her sisters in swimming lessons. In college, she swam competitively on the York College swim team, and while studying at York, she worked at the Jamaica YMCA as a swim instructor. Lamonier said it was a full circle moment when she brought her program to York College last summer. “Being in Jamaica those formative years, and then returning back to York College, it really cultivated my experience,” she said. Currently, the program has expanded to Westbury High School on Long Island. Lamonier said classes are primarily at Westbury High School, as the York College pool is closed for renovations.
Lamonier’s program originated on Long Island, where she rented backyard pools to teach lessons. “I would rent the backyard for about five weeks, Wednesday through Saturday,” she said. “It was a passion project that has really, really flourished.”
With her lessons in high demand, Lamonier now has a team of 15 swim instructors working with her to teach classes. To date, Black People Will Swim has taught over 2,400 people how to swim. The swimmers come from all over the city, with many interested residents coming from Queens and Long Island.
Prices range from about $180-$210, and Black People Will Swim collaborates with non-profits to subsidize the classes, making them either free or low-cost for lower-income families who want to pursue lessons. Students can learn to swim in about six classes, with progression varying from person to person. Lamonier says the goal is for students to learn how to freestyle, backstroke, tread water and jump into the pool by the end of their lessons.
Lamonier said she wants to have her own location in the future and is applying for grants to support that goal. “I think that’s really what we want, to have a safe space, a pool where we can call home. For the immediate future, I think it’s really just consistency, being able to run our program year-round and receiving as many grants as possible so that we can put an end to drownings in our community,” she said.
