Support Open Water Swimming Worldwide | Donate to WOWSA Today

Open water swimming is growing fast: new routes, new challenges, new communities turning to rivers, lakes, and coastlines. With growth comes responsibility — to ensure fairness, protect athletes, reduce drowning risk, and elevate safety standards worldwide.

To meet this moment, WOWSA has three foundational initiatives that together form the backbone of a global movement:

1) Integrity & Verification 

Purpose: Protect fairness in the sport by ensuring every marathon swim is authenticated through transparent, evidence-based standards. 

This initiative strengthens trust in the sport by funding independent observers, analysts, tech systems, and transparent community reports — ensuring extraordinary achievements are verified, lessons captured and fraud cannot undermine legitimate athletes.

2) Open Water Event Safety

Purpose: Equip event organizers worldwide with consistent, modernized safety standards through tools, training, certification, and expert support.

This initiative builds a global safety ecosystem for open water events, reducing risk for thousands of swimmers each year and strengthening organizers’ ability to deliver safe, professionally managed races.

3) Drowning Prevention in Open Water

Purpose: Expand access, teach essential open water-ready skills to adults and kids, support instructors, reduce drowning risk, and empower communities near open water.

This initiative fills a global void: evidence-based open water readiness education for families, instructors, camps, and communities — reducing drowning risk while expanding a culture of joyful, confident open water participation.

Why These Three Initiatives Matter

Together, these programs form an integrated system that supports the sport from entry-level readiness to elite marathon swims:

• Access & Prevention builds confidence and safety from the first day a child or adult enters open water.

• Event Safety creates safe mass-participation opportunities that grow community and expand the sport.

• Integrity & Verification protects fairness and trust at the highest levels of achievement.
  
  

Donors may support one initiative, two, or help build all three as part of WOWSA’s long-term vision.

Your leadership will shape the future of open water swimming — making it safer, fairer, and more accessible for generations.