The simple work of Mrs. Sau Thia

Faced with this situation, the Ministry of Education and Training has called on localities to popularize swimming lessons early to equip children with swimming skills. However, popularizing swimming lessons for students in schools still faces many shortcomings, and the number of deaths due to drowning continues to increase.

Worried and heartbroken by the tragic deaths of children due to drowning, Ms. Sau Thia did not hesitate to volunteer to teach free swimming lessons to thousands of students in Thap Muoi.

"Swimming pool" right on the river of Mrs. Sau Thia.

Mrs. Sau Thia's real name is Tran Thi Kim Thia, born in 1952, from Go Cong Dong district, Tien Giang province. She is the 6th child in the family, so she is called Sau Thia. Her family was poor, her parents passed away one after another, so she started working for a living and then wandered to Hung Thanh commune, Thap Muoi district, Dong Thap province. She "moved" here in 1986 and did all kinds of jobs, from weeding, weeding rice, weaving water hyacinth for hire, then selling lottery tickets and doing heavy work only for men such as cutting cajuput trees, carrying loads...

In 1992, she joined the Women's Union in the hamlet and worked as a lottery ticket seller to earn extra income. In 2002, when Hung Thanh commune implemented a project to popularize swimming for children every summer, Ms. Sau Thia was invited to be a swimming "coach". She immediately agreed and was also trained in the district before returning to open a swimming class.

She said that Hung Thanh commune is located in the flood center of Dong Thap province. Every flood season, there are often tragic cases of children drowning, so she wants to teach the children to swim to protect themselves and reduce their parents' worries.

She confided: “At that time, every time the flood came, I heard on the radio about children drowning, my heart ached. Thinking of the children in the flood area here, I took on this job of teaching swimming.”

Ms. Sau Thia volunteered to be a "coach" teaching free swimming lessons to more than 2,000 children.

Mrs. Sau Thia’s swimming pool for children is also very special, located right on the shallow river in the commune. To keep the children safe, Mrs. Thia took bamboo poles and planted them in the river, then used mosquito nets to surround them, creating a “swimming pool” 8m long, 4m wide and 2m high.

Every day before the children go to school, Mrs. Thia has to dive into the pool first to check if the pool is safe before letting the children in. Not only that, she also does warm-up exercises with the children before swimming to avoid cramps.

The tools that she uses to teach children how to swim are not life jackets as usual, but bamboo sticks tied to the water surface to form the walls of the swimming pool. When they first start learning, all the students are given safety to hold onto them to dive, to tread water...

Each swimming lesson lasts about 1.5 hours, each course lasts about 10 - 15 days and only takes place during 3 summer months, but with the experience of teaching swimming in the countryside and the "cool hand" of Mrs. Sau Thia, the students all learn to swim very quickly, at the slowest it takes about 10 days, but some students only need 4 days to graduate.

A parent whose child attends Ms. Sau Thia’s swimming class shared: “Ms. Sau Thia teaches swimming very well! I don’t know what her secret is, but she taught my son to swim well in 10 days. Before that, my husband and I also worked hard to plant trees and teach our son to tread water, but after practicing for a whole year, my son still couldn’t swim.”

Initially, Ms. Sau Thia taught swimming to children (usually aged 6-14) in only 1-2 hamlets in the commune with a number of 70-80 children. But thanks to her dedication and enthusiasm in going to each house to encourage children to join her swimming class, the number of free swimming courses has increased day by day. Up to now, she has nearly 20 years of experience teaching swimming to children with the number of students up to thousands of children. Thanks to her contributions, there are no more cases of children drowning in Hung Thanh commune.

Although life is extremely difficult, having to earn a living by selling lottery tickets, but every summer, when the flood season is about to come, she puts aside all work to spend time teaching children to swim. Some grateful parents sent her money as tuition, but she refused to accept it. She only accepts the commune's gasoline subsidy of 300,000 VND/class/course.

She shared: “I watched TV and saw many cases of children drowning and felt so sorry. So I want to teach children to swim so that they can protect themselves, not for money. My happiness is seeing children learn to swim and no child has to drown.” Although her life is lonely, in return, teaching thousands of children to swim like her own children always makes her feel joyful and happy.

For her contributions, Ms. Sau Thia was awarded a certificate of merit by the People's Committee of Dong Thap province for her outstanding achievements in teaching swimming to children. Notably, in 2017, she was named in the Top 100 outstanding women in the world by BBC News. In 2018, she was one of three individuals in the Mekong Delta honored to receive the KOVA Award.

Commenting on her, Mr. Le Minh Hoan, Secretary of Dong Thap Provincial Party Committee, had very respectful words: "Ms. Sau Thia, a person without a family, so all the children learning to swim are taken care of and taught by her as if they were her own children and grandchildren, and the parents of the children are considered as her own relatives. She must have a boundless love for children, for her to be willing to do such a humane volunteer work."

Source: https://cand.com.vn/Tam-guong-cuoc-song/Viec-lam-binh-di-cua-ba-Sau-Thia-i535329/