Inner-City Swim Team Images
In the summer of 2013, I had the great privilege of capturing the Emerald Youth Foundation Swim team in inner-city Knoxville. A News-Sentinel photographer was a friend of mine, and he let me borrow a point and shoot camera with an underwater casing. With my own Canon setup and his underwater one, I hung out with this amazing team and watched little ones who couldn’t swim at the beginning of the summer win races against ot
her kids all over the city by the end of the summer.
This swim team was important for so many reasons, as many as 70% of African-American children are not taught to swim, and the rate of drowning deaths of these young ones is significantly higher than Whites or Hispanic children. This swim team also gave these children a place to go after school in an area plagued by gang activity that recruited members at a very young age.
The amazing story of these children went viral on Christianity Today and is told with one of my photographs here. The author was the pastor at All Souls Church, Doug Banister, who led the team for many years, and made sure the children were fed and had transportation, and gave them great courage and confidence. The photographs were used on billboards, in the newspaper, and on promotional materials for the Emerald Youth Foundation. Deb Hardison did all the amazing designs. You can check out her work here.
Read the story here, written by Doug Banister for Christianity Today: http://www.christianitytoday.com/thisisourcity/7thcity/rethinking-3000-missions-trip.html