Social Awareness Project 2

A person that changes the world everyday is Wanda Butts. Her son, Josh, died when the raft that he was  in capsized. He didn’t know how to swim and drowned. Soon after this tragic incident, she learned that a minority child is three times more likely to drown than a white child. This is because many minority children never had the opportunity to learn how to swim, or their parents were afraid that something would happen to them in the water, so they stayed away from it.

"After losing my son, I wanted to do something to help other people, to help another mother not have to suffer the way I do every day from the loss of a child drowning," Butts said.

In order to do this, she founded the Josh Project. The Josh Project is a non-profit organization that teaches children how to swim at costs as low as ten dollars for four Saturdays worth of swimming instruction at a local high school in Toledo, Ohio.

Here is what Lisa Hayes has to say about the Josh Project:

"The public pools near our home have been closed in the past, and other places were not affordable. I am less worried if he is near water because he has the basics of how to swim. And we're thankful for that."

But Wanda Butts doesn’t only teach children how to swim. She makes everybody aware of the dangers of drowning.

According to Butts, "The joy on the faces of those children -- when they see that they can learn, once they get it -- they are so happy with themselves. And it's like all of them are my children. It's like I didn't lose my son."

This is why Wanda Butts is a hero who changes the world everyday.
(http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/10/us/cnnheroes-butts-josh-project/index.html