aBOUT US
The Trust has been set up by individuals who have lengthy backgrounds in all aspects of swimming. The trustees are well known in the community, as advocates of swimming as an important life skill, and have a long history of contributing in that field. Their experience covers early Learn to Swim programmes right through to competitive swimming at World Championships and Olympic standard.
The Trust's objectives are to promote swimming as an important part of our daily life, to lobby for and facilitate the provision of more swimming pools and to support swimming as a sport for children and adults.
As the name suggests the focus is primarily on the Wellington region and the Trust is already working with a variety of different organizations and community groups to make a difference in the area.
The key project, being driven by the Trust, is the redevelopment of the Wellington East Girls’ College pool. This pool will be available to over 4,000 school children, during the school day, and will have a significant impact on the amount of exposure children in central Wellington will have to swimming as part of their weekly routine.
As with any charitable organization, we are dependent on raising funds in the wider community, so if you or someone you know would like to contribute then please contact us at wgtnswim@gmail.com
The aquadome
The original swimming pool at Wellington East Girls' College was built in 1959 involving major earthworks to create a suitable level site for it to sit on. It had a 33-yard pool and a small diving pool alongside and the water was unheated, so pupils only swam in the summer months.
During the sixties and seventies, the pool was regularly used and it was in the late eighties, when funding for school swimming pools was reduced, that the pool began to require major maintenance.
Eventually, the cost of having the pool and maintaining it began to outweigh its usefulness and there were some discussions about what to do with the space it occupied if the pool was filled in.
Around the same time The Trust came up with a plan to refurbish and modernise the old pool and hence the Aquadome was born.
The pool now has a state of the art heating and filtration system and boasts a beautiful steel and fabric enclosure, the first of its kind over a swimming pool in New Zealand. It is designed to operate as two pools at the same time, allowing primary school children and college pupils to access it at the same time. It also provides for a complete learn to swim facility, allowing swimmers to graduate through all the key levels of development in a familiar environment.
We look forward to another 50 years of school swimming at the site!
LEarn to swim project
The current learn to swim programme can be found at www.cityswim.co.nz
The future plans for the Trust include developing swim coaching for all the user schools and to offer basic free learn to swim lessons and increase the level of swimming of all children in the area.
We are currently looking for a corporate partner to help achieve this objective and benefit from giving something special to the community.
Our sponsors
There have been a number of funding organisations and sponsors that have contributed towards the cost of redeveloping the The Aquadome. The total cost is almost $1.5 million and without substantial start up funding from the Wellington City Council the project would not have got started.
Other major contributors include The Lotteries Grants Board, Eastern Suburbs Sports Trust (Pak N Save Kilbirnie),NZCT, Lion Foundation , Wellington Community Trust, Moore Wilson’s and NZ Milk Company.
There are many other contributors and we have tried to acknowledge all of them below.
