The Princess Charlene Foundation will mark World Drowning Prevention Day on 25th July with a public awareness event at the entrance to the Stade Nautique Rainier III in Monaco, where a prevention village will run from 10am to 5pm alongside rescue demonstrations. The date has been observed worldwide since the United Nations General Assembly designated 25th July as World Drowning Prevention Day in a resolution adopted on 28th April 2021, and the Foundation relays the initiative in the Principality each year.
Drowning remains one of the world’s most persistent preventable killers. The World Health Organization’s first global status report on drowning prevention, published in 2024, recorded more than 300,000 drowning deaths in 2021, with children and young people the worst affected. The Princess Charlene Foundation has worked on the cause since it was founded in 2012, running programmes that teach children to swim and raise awareness of water safety.
More than two million young beneficiaries
By the start of 2026, the Foundation says its swimming and drowning-prevention programmes, run across 45 countries, had taught more than 760,500 children to swim and given water-safety awareness to more than 1,544,000 others, a combined total of over 2,304,500 beneficiaries under the age of 18.
A summer awareness campaign
Alongside the event, the Foundation is rolling out a summer campaign built around a series of videos showing everyday situations, intended to remind the public that drowning can happen quickly and often in familiar surroundings. The films depict realistic scenes and simple preventive actions, and will run through the summer across the Principality, in several neighbouring communes in the south of France and on social media, timed for the period when the risk of drowning is at its highest.
The programme on the day
Between 10am and 5pm, the prevention village at the entrance to the Stade Nautique Rainier III will bring together the Foundation with the Monaco Red Cross, the Maritime Police and Monaco’s fire brigade, with visitors able to learn life-saving techniques and water-safety practices and to speak to those working in prevention. At 11am, the Maritime Police will stage a rescue demonstration with the lifeguards of the Stade Nautique Rainier III, followed by further demonstrations and activities through the day, while an official photograph bringing together the Foundation and its partners is planned for around 11.30am. The Foundation is also offering free entry to the pool to the first 100 children under the age of 18 to arrive on the day.
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Photo source: Princess Charlene of Monaco Foundation